


they may be lies, but say that we'll be alright

by smc_27



Series: before i knew which life was mine [1]
Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, a series of unconnected but sorta connected oneshots, the other worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: She’s got this weird feeling that everything with him is so natural and normal that there’s no way to imagine them not eventually ending up friends. Which is a fucked up thought, because prior to all this, all they had ever shared were barbs back and forth, or her calling him out on being a jerk to her sister.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Series: before i knew which life was mine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872871
Comments: 11
Kudos: 104





	they may be lies, but say that we'll be alright

**Author's Note:**

> 👋🏻 This is the first of three imaginings of the other worlds, in which Harry and Allie are friends. As you will be quickly able to tell, the idea of them just being friends is something I simply cannot compute. All three stories are unconnected, but have common threads amongst all the worlds. 
> 
> But. These are the other worlds. Hope you enjoy this first one!

Kelly breaks up with him the night of the play. Literally he’s just finished changing and washing stage makeup off his face and she’s telling him they need to talk. So that’s fucked up. But he doesn’t even fight her on it, because it feels pointless. She’s clearly made up her mind and he doesn’t have it in him to try to convince her he loves her, or something, and that they should stay together. He doesn’t think it works that way. If she’s done, she’s done.

He drives her to the party anyway, after she’s dumped him while sitting shotgun in his car. She gets out when he parks, asks if he’s okay. He says he is and just needs a minute. She leaves him there alone and goes inside. Harry white knuckles the steering wheel and takes some deep breaths. He’s not surprised by any of this shit, not really. It’s a long time coming. He thinks they’ve been phoning it in since before his dad died and Kelly is just too good of a person to abandon someone when they need her. And as much as he feels like shit right now, he’s thankful to her for that, at least. 

He knows that as soon as he goes inside, everyone’s gonna know the news. They usually do these parties together. They’re gonna be on opposite sides of the house all night now. And still, instead of just driving away and going home, he gets out and heads for the door. So when she used to say it’s almost like he likes to be in pain...Shit, maybe she’s right. 

He’s not drinking but wishes he was. Tonight sucks. 

… … …

Will breaks her heart the night of the play. Maybe she shouldn’t be heartbroken. She should’ve seen it coming. She’s just always thought it was impossible for them to be as close as they are - were - and him not feel it too. But she kisses him and he makes her feel two feet tall, and more than being upset that he didn’t reciprocate, she thinks she’s upset about that. About him trying to make her feel ashamed of herself, or something. Make her feel badly for her feelings.

She walks away from him because she’s hurt and angry and doesn’t even know how she’s supposed to look at him now. Maybe he’s right and she’s changed everything, but ‘everything’ was him (and probably everybody else) knowing how she felt and just ignoring it. Is it wrong of her to think there’s something really selfish about that, too?

She grabs a beer from the kitchen and sees Harry sitting on the counter, alone, looking at his phone. She looks back over her shoulder. 

Will is already talking to Kelly. She watches him say something, and her nod, and then they walk out of sight. 

Allie bites her lip to keep from doing something stupid like crying. Then, when she notices him watching her, she gives Harry a look even she doesn’t know the meaning of, and heads out the back door. There’s a pool here. She wants to put her feet in, so she does. She hears the door open and close again, and doesn’t bother looking to see who it is. 

Harry kicks off his shoes, rolls up his pants and sits next to her.

Her brain goes foggy, and she closes her eyes tight against the overwhelming feeling that she’s done this before with him. Which is absurd. Because she and Harry barely talk, and when they do it’s only for him to flirt relentlessly and her to smile and roll her eyes. Otherwise, it’s her giving him shit and pointing out when he’s being an asshole, which he also, weirdly, seems to kind of like. It’s like a game she doesn’t mind playing. But they don’t hang out at parties and they’ve never even spoken outside of school. The déjà vu is too strong not to make her head hurt. Literally. 

Harry bumps her shoulder and the headache snaps away like it was never there. 

“What’re you doing out here?” he asks, stretching his legs out under the water. Allie wishes her toe nails were polished or something. 

“Trying to find peace and quiet.”

Harry laughs a little. “I feel like I’ve improved on it.”

She doesn’t want to smile. She looks down, hoping he won’t see. “You would think that.” She glances at him and he’s grinning a bit, hands braced on either side of him as he looks at his lap. “She’s with Will.”

Harry pauses, one eye closed tight. There’s a heavy silence and she worries she shouldn’t have said anything. Her head hurts.

“Who?”

“The person you’d rather be out here with,” she answers. Harry rubs at his temple. 

“I don’t care.” Allie pushes her hair off her face. He’s watching her. “You?”

The pain sweeps across her forehead again just before she answers, “No.”

It’s quiet, except for their breathing. There’s a silence that stretches out and Allie takes a sip of her beer. It’s not even good and she doesn’t really want it. She offers it to him, but he shakes his head no. 

“We broke up,” he finally says, and Allie freezes. Harry and Kelly breaking up is almost unfathomable. They’ve been together since tenth grade. Inseparable. Perfect. Each one of them somehow more beautiful than the other. 

“I’m sorry,” she says instead of any of that. Because her words wouldn’t make any more sense than this breakup does. And because the next thought in her mind is that now Will has his chance. It makes her feel bitter. “Are you okay?”

Harry looks at her like he’s surprised she’s asking. Like he’s surprised she cares. She thinks the answer is no, but he shrugs a shoulder and says, “I think I’ve been a shitty boyfriend.”

Allie doesn’t mean to laugh out loud. She covers her mouth and looks at him with an apology, but he’s just smiling at her like she’s surprising him and also like he might be happy, or something. Amused, maybe.

“I think Will’s been stringing me along.”

Harry lets out a breathy laugh whilst he says, “No shit,” like maybe everyone’s known it but her. It makes her feel foolish. “You’re too good for him anyway.”

He says it like a secret, like it’s something he’s thought for a while, and it makes Allie feel as though maybe someone has been paying attention to her all this time. Like maybe she’s not invisible. And the fact that someone is Harry, who’s smart and hot and popular…

“Thanks,” she says, smiling at him

He’s just looking at her, then he leans in slowly and she knows what’s happening and doesn’t stop it. Harry presses his lips to hers and her eyes slam closed when the pain rips through her head again. 

He pulls away quicker than maybe she’d like, and presses his fingertips across his forehead. 

“Sorry,” he tells her softly, and she just shakes her head. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

Allie shrugs a shoulder, meets his eyes. “I liked it.”

“I’m fucked up.”

She laughs loudly, stands up. “You and me both, pal.”

She reaches her hand down to help him up, then he’s standing in front of her, looking down just slightly. She tugs her hand away when he doesn’t let it go. 

“I’m gonna head out,” he tells her, then asks, “Want a ride?”

She isn’t sure what her parents would think - what Cassandra would think - but she also doesn’t want to stay here. So she nods her head and follows him around the side of the house, gets into his car after he’s unlocked it, and then once he’s turned the key in the ignition, she sees white, and leans forward with her head in her hands. This fucking headache is brutal. She’s never had a migraine before and wonders if this is one. 

“Allie,” he says worriedly, puts his hand on her back over her shirt. That doesn’t help her pain and only makes it worse, so she wrenches away from him. When he takes his hand away, the throbbing stops almost instantly. 

“I have this weird headache.” Harry’s staring at her blankly, then just nods slowly. “Sorry. Can you just drive?”

… … …

Harry can’t sleep. He’s thinking about Allie. Not even like _that_ , even though he kissed her on a weird fucking impulse like some outside force was telling him to just go for it and it would make sense after. That force had shit for brains, apparently, because he’s more confused now than he was before. He can’t say he’s ever kissed a girl and immediately gotten a splitting headache and an almost overwhelming feeling of nausea. And Allie’s hot so it’s not like it was a chore or it should’ve been difficult, or whatever. None of this makes sense. And he’d had that pain in his temple when they were talking, too. And then she said that shit about having a headache after looking like she was going to throw up as soon as they got in his car. 

He goes downstairs and gets a drink of brandy to help turn his mind off. He got dumped and Allie got burned by the guy she likes and they’re both just emotional and that’s all this is. That’s all.

In the morning, his mom’s bugging the hell out of him over breakfast. She asks him if he has everything he needs for the trip. Asks if he’s picking up Kelly on the way. He doesn’t lie, but he also doesn’t tell her they’ve broken up. Kelly fits into her perfect vision of him being with a rich, pretty girl, and he doesn’t have it in him to have this conversation with her right now. She tells him she’s off to work, kisses his head like she usually does, like that means she cares, or something. She tells him to have fun and be responsible. He’s pretty sure she just means not to have a bunch of crazy sex and drink himself into a coma. Not to embarrass her.

He walks past Kelly on the bus. She’s sitting with Will. So that pisses him off. When he takes an empty seat near the back, he takes out his phone so he doesn’t have to pretend to pay attention to who else is sitting with who. He glances up just in time to see Allie step onto the bus. Their eyes seem to lock, and he realizes the last available spot is next to him. He slides over like some kind of invitation, or whatever. 

“Hey,” she says, sitting down next to him. He smiles. Or thinks he does. He means to. “Sorry I was weird last night.”

He furrows his brow. “You weren’t.”

She was.

He should tell her he had the headache, too, but he’s worried it’ll open a whole can of worms he isn’t prepared to deal with right now. So instead of that, he asks her why she’s not sitting with her sister. Allie rolls her eyes. He thinks it’s kind of hot, but doesn’t know why and doesn’t want to think about it. She says something about Cassandra seeing whose car she was getting out of last night, and Allie not appreciating the ensuing lecture. Harry grinds his teeth. Cassandra is just so full of shit. The entire reason she doesn’t like him is that she can’t handle that there’s someone out there as smart and capable as she is. Like, fuck her, honestly. 

“Would she have rather I left you there with no way home?” he asks. Allie presses her lips together like this is familiar, or something. 

“She didn’t like that I said that, too.” He laughs a little. He’s never seen her stand up to Cassandra. He’s not surprised to learn it’s a thing she does when no one else is around. He gets the sense that Allie’s got too much respect or love for her sister to not challenge her in public. He thinks he’s maybe seen her want to, a few times. At least, he’s seen her with this fiery look in her eyes that was hot enough for him to make note of.

“Hey, so about last night…”

“Oh god, Harry,” she says quietly, breathing out a laugh. She’s shaking her head, too. “You don’t have to let me down gently. We were...I get it.” 

He’s a little insulted, honestly. Like, fuck, she might as well have just said she wouldn’t be caught dead kissing him. 

He’s not gonna let her do that to him. She kissed him back, okay? And then she said she liked it.

“I wanted to kiss you,” he says quietly, because as much as he wants to tell her that, to make it clear, he also doesn’t want a bunch of people to know their business, and she probably doesn’t, either. 

“Have you even been single for 18 hours?” she asks, almost whispering. Harry rolls his eyes. She sounds naive as hell, but he doesn’t want to be a dick about it. 

He’s afraid he sounds like one when he replies, “Being single has nothing to do with wanting to kiss other people.”

She still looks at him like he’s an asshole. So whatever. 

“Either way,” she says, then pulls her knees up and rests them against the back of the seat ahead of them. “We can just...not talk about it again. It’s fine.” 

And because he _is_ a bit of an asshole: “If we don’t talk about it, can we just do it?”

Allie laughs, looks at him and shakes her head. “Shut up, Harry.” 

He smiles at her and thinks this whole thing could be a lot worse, honestly. 

… … …

She doesn’t know if she falls asleep on him or if he falls asleep on her. Her head is against his shoulder, his head against hers. So probably it’s the former. They absolutely don’t need to be holding hands under the jacket he put over them when she said she was cold, but here they are. It’s dark when she wakes up to the bus slowing to a jerky stop. She moves her head and Harry whines, squeezes her hand and says, “Come back.”

Allie’s always thought he had these real flashes of being _cute_ , but that really, really just…

Wait. She sees the high school past him, out the window. Others are starting to wake up, and Allie squeezes his hand hard until he groans and moves. Then he looks at her and gently pulls his hand away. She realizes she definitely could have done that, too, before now. Shit. 

Then the driver says something about a road being closed and turning around, and Allie wonders how long it’s been. And Harry’s asking, “What the fuck?” and his voice sounds good that low, she’ll admit. He looks at her like she has more answers or info than he does. Which she obviously doesn’t.

Allie pulls out her phone and taps out a text to her mom, then slides it back into her pocket. She glances up to see Cassandra, who’s looking back at her like she’s almost relieved Allie’s still there, or something. 

Allie turns back at Harry and there’re little lines on his face from how he’d been resting on her hair. She doesn’t mean to laugh. He looks truly offended, but also a little adorable when he furrows his brow and scrubs at his skin.

“What?” he asks, looking at his fingers as if to see if there’s anything coming off his skin. 

“Nothing. I make for a good pillow?”

“No,” he laughs, and she bites her lip. He’s grinning just enough that she thinks he’s about to make a joke. “Your hair kept getting in my mouth.” 

She laughs again. This is stupid. 

“Yeah, well your cologne nearly choked me,” she lies, just to even the playing field. He smirks at her, knowing she’s not telling the truth. “And your death grip on my hand…”

“No,” he interrupts incredulously. “ _Your_ death grip.”

She opens her mouth for a rebuttal, but then Cassandra is there, looking down at her, looking scared, and Allie stops herself from this...whatever it is she’s doing with Harry. He stops, too. 

“We should get home,” Cassandra says, and Allie just nods. “We all should.”

Harry scoffs, and Allie sort of...Look, she kind of agrees that Cassandra shouldn’t be telling Harry what to do - he’s not stupid, and like, what, would he have just stood around in the parking lot if Cassandra hadn’t said that? 

But she still gets up out of her seat and turns to say goodbye to him when Cassandra’s back is to them. He nods slowly, holds up his hand in a wave, then stands and stretches before following her off the bus. 

She gets off the bus and sees everyone on their phones, trying to call their parents. When she catches Harry’s eye when he’s got his phone to his ear, too, her head starts hurting again. He looks confused. Looks scared. Allie nods her head when Cassandra says something, even though she barely registers what it is. She turns for another look at him and he watches her leave. 

… … …

He’ll admit he has a drink as soon as he gets home. His house is fucking silent, which isn’t rare, honestly, but he goes room to room and there’s no one home, even though all the cars are in the garage. That, more than anything, scares the shit out of him. It’s not that they left, but _how_. Literally, how did they leave? 

And when he says ‘a drink’, he means he pours a shot of the good gin, which is definitely not meant for shooting, and takes several deep breaths after. 

Kelly’s the one who shows up. The one who tells him something’s fucked up. Yeah, no shit. Kelly says Cassandra’s calling them all to the church. Harry rolls his eyes, but drives anyway, because...Well, he can’t think of a good enough reason not to. He should probably know what’s going on, at least to the same extent anyone does.

This is all bullshit. Cassandra’s trying to control the uncontrollable, and he just wants to ignore it but lacks the coping mechanisms to do so in a way that’s meaningful. When someone shouts that the church is open, Harry sees Allie across the grass, her eyes closed as she stands next to her sister. Kelly wanders off. Doesn’t say anything about him staring at another girl. And like, fuck her, anyway, if she has a problem with it. What’s it to her, at this point? Doesn’t the fact that they’re broken up mean that she can’t be pissed at him for this kind of thing? He probably wouldn’t be looking if she hadn’t dumped him. Probably. Maybe.

Whatever.

“What’s going on?” he asks Allie as if he thinks she’ll have an answer, or something. He realizes that’s unfair. She can’t possibly - how could she? “Is Cassandra trying to be divine ruler? Are you just going along with it?”

“Harry,” she sighs. 

“Because I think you’d be better at it than her, anyway.”

Okay, so, now he knows what Allie looks like when she’s mad. She crosses her arms, glares, and sets her lips in a tight line. Harry watches the way her jaw twitches. Thinks it’s hot. 

“You can’t be an asshole to my sister and then nice to me. It doesn’t work that way.”

He closes his eyes, his right temple throbbing like a motherfucker, and then when he looks at Allie again, she seems confused, or concerned, or...He maybe doesn’t know her well enough to know what this expression is. But he can hear her, over the sudden ringing in his ears, ask if he’s okay. 

“Being around you gives me a fucking headache,” he mumbles, then looks behind him, sits down on the grass. It’s a shit thing to say, and he figures she’s going to walk off, but she’s just standing there looking at him, and then sits down. She looks…

No, again. He’s got nothing. He’s not gonna pretend he knows enough about her to know what she’s thinking. She’s on her knees in front of him, looking at him, and then she glances around to make sure no one else is watching. Harry rolls his eyes, because like, fuck, is now the time to worry whether or not her keeper - or worse, her annoying best friend - is witness?

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and Allie’s just staring at him. “You probably weren’t suggesting I be an asshole to both of you.”

He sees a hint of a smile, but it disappears too fast, and she’s shaking her head. “No, that’s...I’m getting headaches, too.”

Harry laughs, leans back on his elbows. He notices the way Allie looks at his stomach, or whatever, but he doesn’t acknowledge it, really. He’s way too fucked up to consider trying to hook up with her. That’s a lie. He’s considering it. But he’s not gonna act on it. Not now. 

Allie moves to sit down next to him on the grass, her legs crossed. He thinks if he moved onto his side, one of her knees would bump his side and the other his hip. It’s a little fucked that he likes being this close to her when before yesterday, they weren’t even really anything at all. 

“This is scaring the shit out of me,” she confesses, and it’s quiet, and Harry nods instead of making some joke. 

“Yeah. Same.”

“It’s only with you.” That...doesn’t make sense as a sentence, so he just stares at her, waiting. “The headaches.” He nods. He doesn’t know what she’s getting at. But it’s the same for him. Which doesn’t make this less scary. He just figured...Allie’s got more people she’s talking to. He’s spoken to like, her and Kelly and that’s it. She bites her lip, which looks cute, and then says, “What’s the opposite of soulmates? Maybe that’s what this is.”

Harry laughs out loud. He looks up and sees the stars, then looks over and sees Allie’s necklace. He’s never noticed it before. 

“Like the universe telling us to stay the fuck away from each other.” She’s grinning. She nods. He thinks they’re both joking, but also like, anything's possible, right? Maybe, in particular, anything’s possible _now_ , when there’s no supervision and honestly no reason not to make all the wrong choices. 

“You have any other ideas?” she asks, and Harry sits up, his arm bumping against her thigh. He knows the look on her face. Or at least he thinks he does. She thinks he’s hot. 

“Take you home?” She scoffs, tilts her head. “I'm not trying to hook up with you. I’m literally offering you a drive home so you don’t have to walk.”

Before she gets out of his car, she checks to make sure she has his number. She does. He’s trying to think of how she would’ve gotten it, but then he remembers the play and their teacher telling them they all had to add everyone’s numbers for ‘ease of communication’, or whatever. He didn’t do it. Shit. He tells her so, and she says, “Who’s surprised?” as he grabs his phone from the cupholder where he dropped it when they got into the car, and hands it to her so she can key her number in. 

She puts the little yellow heart next to her name. It’s stupid. It’s really...She hands it back to him, eyes shining like she’s challenging him to change it. 

“If I still had a girlfriend, you know this would get me in shit, right?”

Allie shrugs her shoulder, reaches for the door handle. “Good thing you don’t, then.”

Flirting with Allie is sort of fun. 

… … …

She tells Cassandra she has to do something, because Cassandra is the only person in town that Allie really, really trusts, and she’s fucking terrified, okay? This is insane, and nothing makes sense, and she, like everyone else, just needs to feel like someone among them knows how the _fuck_ to make sure they don’t destroy each other.

Morbidly, she wonders if they’re already dead. Not in a weird, metaphoric way where their days are numbered because they clearly aren’t equipped to do this, or their food supply is limited. She really, genuinely has a thought that maybe they died and this is purgatory, or some shit. Punishment for not being better people. 

Harry and Luke are at the church when they arrive. Allie doesn’t like the way he ignores her, the way he tells Cassandra to fuck off. The way he acts like she can’t possibly know what’s right in this situation. Allie literally looks down at him, because he’s beneath her, but also because he’s kind of acting like he’s just trying to be contrarian, and Allie thinks that’s fucking counterproductive. 

He offers to drive to get help, and then Cassandra crosses her arms, says to Allie, “Why don’t you go, too?” Allie reels back like she’s been slapped. What the hell? “You like spending time in Harry’s car.” 

It’s so shitty, rude and makes Allie look really bad in front of Luke and Sam, and Allie doesn’t appreciate it in the slightest. She clenches her jaw. Harry’s eyes just kind of shift back and forth between the two of them. 

“Better than doing fucking nothing,” she says darkly. And look, she and Cassandra have always been able to fight like this. Allie learned how to do it because her parents would always give her shit if she was mean to her sister. It didn’t take Cassandra any time at all to learn how to fight back. Now it’s like clinical warfare. 

The only reason Cassandra’s doing anything is because Allie made her. She doesn’t want Cassandra to forget that as she’s dishing out orders and getting that rush she gets when people do what she says. 

Allie sits in the front seat of Harry’s stupid convertible, Grizz and Luke in the back. She leans her arm on the window, chews her nail, and they’re way too quiet until Grizz says something. She’s barely listening. She’s barely paying attention to anything other than how mad she is at her sister, how she’s a little embarrassed and just wanted to get defensive and tell everyone there’s nothing going on between her and Harry. She isn’t sure Grizz and Luke would believe it, so she isn’t going to bother. 

Her breath catches when they get to the edge of town and…

She reaches for Harry’s arm protectively when he opens the door to get out of the car. She says his name, but he literally shrugs her off and gets out anyway, and then Allie unclips her seatbelt and stands, hands on the windshield as she watches him approach the trees. Grizz says something behind her, and Luke hasn’t said a word. Harry looks back, locks eyes with her, then steps closer to... God, she doesn’t even know what she’s looking at, but part of her is terrified that if he gets too close, the trees will swallow him up, too. 

She doesn’t have her seatbelt on before he’s throwing the car in drive and making a u-turn. She doesn’t know where he’s going until he bypasses downtown and heads along the train tracks, driving way too fast. Allie hates that there’s a part of her that likes it. That likes the danger and the feeling of the car under her, pushing her backwards, the wind in her hair. She’s thrown forward a bit when he brakes on the bridge. She looks over and sees that he’s breathing hard. She can see his chest rising and falling. Of course she can; his shirt’s practically unbuttoned to his stomach. She was going to make fun of him for that earlier. Now it feels fucking pointless. 

She texts Cassandra and they wait. Sometime later, she shows up with Helena and Gordie, and then Will and Kelly arrive, too. Allie doesn’t miss the way Harry looks at Kelly like he’s hurt by her being with Will, or something. Allie ignores it - it doesn’t matter - and stands on the bridge, her legs against the bars, looking out at the train tracks and the trees. There’s talk about a search party, and then Cassandra and Harry snapping at each other, and then some shit about an alternate universe, or…

“I’m leaving. I’m hungry.” 

Allie’s head hurts. This is getting really fucking inconvenient. She turns around, levels him with a look that makes him lose some of his bravado. “You’re leaving?”

She can tell by the way his eyes close like that, that the headache is affecting him, too. She glances at her sister. Cassandra has no indication she’s unwell. There’s some more bickering, which she doesn’t hear because of the pounding in her head. 

But then Harry says, “You coming, Allie?”

And she wants to go with him, because it seems so much simpler than _this_. Than trying to figure out how the fuck they got here and how the fuck they leave. And worse, trying to figure out where the fuck they even _are_.

But Will says, “Leave her alone.” 

“Fuck off, Will,” Harry says, way too easily, and Allie sees black spots in her entire field of view, falls to her knees, holding her head. 

The concrete hurts, but is barely even a distraction from her head. When she leans forward and rests her forehead on the ground, Cassandra is next to her. But then Harry is, too, his hand on her back and he’s saying her name like he’s worried. 

“Allie, are you…”

“It’s her head,” he tells Cassandra, and they’re talking about her like she isn’t here, which maybe makes sense because she’s barely conscious, sort of. There’s something… “Allie, hey.”

She looks over at him, locks eyes. The blinding pain subsides, and as she takes a few deep breaths, it disappears completely. His eyes soften like he’s asking if she’s better, if it’s gone, and she just blinks at him. She doesn’t know how to talk about this with anyone else here. She wants to leave with Harry. 

She gets up, his hand still on her back. He doesn’t move it, even when Cassandra says her name. 

She doesn’t say anything at all when they get in the car and drive away. She notices he’s driving slower. She notices his hand is holding the wheel tightly enough that his knuckles turn white. She leans her head back against the seat and asks if he has any music. He laughs a little, turns the radio on. It’s static. They share a look like they should’ve known it would be, and he switches it off. 

He’s grinning when he says, “I could sing,” and Allie tells him to shut up, and then they’re both laughing and everything feels more normal, somehow, than it has all day.

… … …

He only takes her to his house because when he slows down in front of hers, she says, “Not here,” and he figures he can’t really argue with what she wants. And like, yeah, they could go literally anywhere else in this fucking ghost town right now, apparently, but at least at his house he knows they’ll have privacy and whatever it is she wants. 

The way she looks around once they’re inside lets him know she’s never been here before. Which is a fact you’d think he would’ve known, but also he has a lot of parties and the guest list isn’t exactly strict. She could’ve come before and he wasn’t paying attention. But she’s looking up at the ceiling, and then running her hand along the table in the hallway, and then looking at the stuff on the mantle in the living room. He asks if she wants a drink and puts the kettle on for tea. 

“Hey, so. What the fuck is going on?” she asks, and Harry laughs, pushes himself up onto the counter so he can sit there. Allie just leans back against the island across from him. “It’s getting worse.”

“Yeah. When you yelled at me…”

“I didn’t _yell_ at you.” 

He grins at her. This makes no sense. Why is it that sometimes when they’re talking it feels like his head’s in a vice, and other times it’s fine. Even if that shit she said about reverse soulmates was true, you’d think he’d just feel like shit every time he sees her. He knows she was joking, but now, after seeing what they saw today, he isn’t about to take anything off the table. And is no one else feeling this shit? Is it really just them? That makes no goddamn sense, either. 

“Come here,” he says, and Allie looks at him like he’s insane. He hops down off the counter in case she’s gonna be precious about standing between his legs, or whatever. He reaches for her hands. “We’ve gotta figure out if it’s like, contact, or…”

“Maybe I’m allergic to your cologne.” He rolls his eyes at her bad joke and holds her hands in his. “What are you doing?”

“Experimenting.” She at least looks a little amused, her lips quirking. “Look, when has it happened? When we were talking, when we were in the car, before all this.” She nods. “When I told Will to fuck off on the bridge. Which felt great, by the way. You should try it.” 

Allie laughs, then presses her lips together, and Harry smiles, brushes his thumbs over her knuckles. Her skin is soft. 

She’s not looking at him when she says, “When we kissed.”

Harry swallows. Shit. She’s right. He looks at her lips. She must be watching him do it, because she smiles. 

“Should we try it again?”

Allie looks unimpressed, but he’s not even just being a flirt. “If you’re just doing all this so you can…”

“I’m not!” he laughs. She doesn’t look convinced, so he softens. “I’m not.” 

“Us kissing today isn’t any better an idea now than it was yesterday or the day before,” she argues, and Harry nods, though he sort of disagrees. It doesn’t matter, right now, if he disagrees. That’s not the point. 

“We’re testing a hypothesis,” he reminds her. “You can even count to three and then pull away. No funny business.”

She laughs through her nose and looks up at him. This’d be more convincing, probably, if she wasn’t so fucking pretty. 

“If you’re playing me, Harry, I swear to god…”

“I’m not,” he says quietly, which, again, probably makes him sound like he just _wants this_. He’s confusing even himself. Because who the fuck knows _what_ he wants. He knows seeing Kelly earlier made him feel like shit. But he knows being around Allie really, really doesn’t. “I wouldn’t.”

“Fine,” she says after a moment. He probably smiles too easily. She slips her fingers between his, which is totally unnecessary, but he’s not going to call her on that, either. “Kiss me, then.” 

Shit. That sounds…

He leans in, presses his lips against hers, and it’s gentle, simple, sort of...nothing remarkable whatsoever. In the sense that it’s not like, _hot_ , or whatever, but that doesn’t mean he wants to stop, either. But notably, there’s no brutal headache, and then when Allie pulls away, her brow is all furrowed like she’s confused, so he figures it was the same for her. 

“I don’t get it,” she says, shaking her head. 

“Well, see, when two people like each other…”

She shoves at his chest hard and he stumbles backwards, letting go of her other hand, and then the kettle’s whistling and he’s throwing a random tea bag into a mug and pouring water. When he turns back around, she’s lost in thought, rubbing her fingers along her bottom lip. She looks really good doing that, he thinks. He passes her the mug and she takes it, throwing him a distracted smile. 

“It’s messed up, but I have this feeling we’ve done this before,” she admits quietly, like she’s not sure how he’s going to react. 

Which makes sense, because that’s an absolutely insane statement, and he really doesn’t know what to do with it. 

“Done...what before?” he asks. She sighs like she doesn’t have an answer. But she said it out loud, and he thinks it makes sense that he’d ask her what she means by it. 

“All this,” is what she says, on a whisper. Harry’s just looking at her. “These déjà vus that I get before the headaches…” She looks up at him, this like, desperate expression on her face. “Do you not?”

He just nods, telling the truth, because he doesn’t want her to feel like shit about it. And he’s sort of liking this thing where they’re talking, trying to sort this out, and he doesn’t want her to stop, or to feel like she can’t share it with him. 

“Just once, though,” he says honestly, and she looks confused. “By the pool.”

“When you kissed me?”

He shakes his head. She’s just waiting for more. “When you told me Kelly was with Will.”

He doesn’t know what reaction he was expecting. Harry scrubs a hand through his hair, and Allie blows steam off her tea. 

“It just feels really real,” she says, not looking at him. He thinks she’s embarrassed, or scared, or something. He doesn’t know what to say to that. Like, is she actually suggesting they’ve somehow lived through this shit before? That makes less sense than reverse soulmates. “And I just...I feel like I know what we have to do to not fucking die here.”

Harry laughs softly, raises his brows, and leans back on the counter. “Maybe that’s because you’re actually better than your sister at some things.”

She shakes her head side to side, too fast to really mean it. The reaction’s too visceral. Overcompensating. Trying to convince him. 

“That’s not true.”

“I think it is, actually,” he says, wanting her to really hear how sincerely he means it. “And I think you know it, too. And before, I didn’t notice because I just...I just didn’t know you. Like, at all.”

They feel it at the same time. He can tell. Allie’s chin starts trembling, and then he watches these tears fall from her eyes, and he can’t fucking stand that. He closes the space between them and puts his arms around her, and she grabs onto the back of his shirt. He used to hate it when Kelly did that, even if she needed comforting. It felt too restrictive. Too tight, or something. Like he couldn’t escape without being an asshole, because she needed him and there was no way out. With Allie, he doesn’t mind. Maybe it’s because she’s not sobbing the way Kelly used to. Like, with Allie he doesn’t feel like she cries the way she does because it’ll get her attention and what she wants. Which is how he always thought Kelly would like, weaponize her feelings. It’s probably unfair of him to think that. He’ll never say it to anyone. It doesn’t matter. 

“It’ll be okay,” he says, but Allie lets out this sad sound and pulls away, wipes her eyes and shakes her head. 

“You don’t know that. You can’t know that.”

She’s right, but he’s just trying to make her feel better and he doesn’t know how, otherwise. All his best distraction tactics are fucked here. With Kelly, he could like, kiss her and go down on her and help her have an orgasm and she’d feel sufficiently distracted from the shit that was bothering her. He’s not gonna do that with Allie. Not that he _wouldn’t_ , but he knows it’s fucking inappropriate. For a lot of reasons. But also - _also_ \- he just sort of feels like Allie needs more than that. More than someone just trying to placate her or take her mind off things. She wants logic and reason, and he doesn’t know how to help with that, either, but it feels important that he recognizes it, anyway. 

“Wanna chase xanny with some scotch? Works for me, most of the time.” She actually laughs, then maybe, _maybe_ considers it, but then shakes her head. “What do you want, Allie?”

It sounds heavy when he says it. Like he’s saying he’d do fucking anything to help her, which is untrue, probably. Maybe. Likely. But he also didn’t stop himself from saying it, and he doesn’t even know what that says about him. 

“Show me around your fancy house,” she says, and he laughs, because _what_? “Wish fulfillment, or something. Let me pretend one day I could’ve had something like this.”

Harry smiles, but sighs. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he says, and it should sound like a joke, but Allie looks to her feet. 

“What _is_?” she asks, and shit. She’s way too deep. She makes him go into his own head more than he likes to. He’s spent most of his life trying to figure out how to avoid doing that. 

He asks where she wants to start. She says the basement, which he thinks is weird, but also his basement is filled with a home gym, media room, and games room his dad put in. With a wet bar and a pool table and a bunch of other fancy shit Harry’s only just begun to appreciate now that he’s older. Then they wander around the main floor; the living room, the formal dining room, the reading room at the end of the hall that he has a hard time not calling his dad’s office. Then upstairs, he shows her everything but his room until she says, “I wanna see,” and he tries to hide his reaction to that, which is like, just… He doesn’t _want her_ , but he’d also be cool with it if she wanted him, you know? She makes fun of his plaid comforter and his water polo trophies from when he was younger. 

He doesn’t know what makes him do it, but he puts his hand on her hip from behind when she’s standing near his bed, and yeah, okay, he’s looking at her hair and her body and then she sort of leans back against him, and _shit_ there goes his fucking head and this déjà vu, and Allie steps away from him and looks at him through her lashes again, like she wants to know why the fuck this would happen again _now_. _Here_. In his room, where she’s never been, when they’re next to his bed and he’s touching her like he never has. It makes no sense. 

(And okay, when he said he didn’t want her, maybe...Maybe he does and he’s just fighting it. Because he doesn’t know what it means if he does.) 

They don't say anything as they leave the room. Allie comments that she hasn’t seen any family photos anywhere. He doesn’t know how the hell to respond to that. 

They end the tour by the pool. Allie says she’s tempted to jump in. He’s tempted to push her, but doesn’t want her mad at him. There’s no way that water’s warm enough to actually be in there right now. 

She says she doesn’t want to risk a headache by doing something similar to what they did the other night. Harry’s just thinking about kissing her, which is stupid and probably not what she means. The look on her face lets him know she can tell. 

She says, “In your dreams, Bingham.” 

He laughs instead of making some flirty comment. 

(And like. They literally kissed in the kitchen like, a half hour ago. It’s not a crazy thought, or some wild, unimaginable thing. Not for him.)

When he drops her off at home, he sees Cassandra looking out the window. He waves and she waves back, looking relieved or something. As if he’d fucking kidnap Allie, or something. As if there’s anywhere to _go_.

Which he says out loud, which probably doesn’t help. 

“She’s worried because I was on the _ground_ , Harry,” she says, which feels like a correction, which he doesn’t love. Then she looks at him, though, and she’s being serious and intense, and so he doesn’t say anything shitty or argue with her. “She’s not worried about what you’re doing, she’s worried about me.”

He says, “I’m worried about you, too,” without really thinking, but he finds he means it. 

Allie nods, gives him a look that tells him, pretty clearly, she feels the same way about him. She tells him to drive safely, and he squeals the tires when he pulls out of the driveway just so he can see her laughing in his rear view.

… … …

She’ll give Cassandra credit, she waits until the next day before saying anything about Harry. Which is like, some kind of miracle, or whatever. 

And what she comes out with is, “Are you and Harry...You’re not, like…” and Allie just rolls her eyes. 

“We’re not,” she confirms, and she’s confirming that they’re not sneaking around, not making out, not hooking up. Sure as hell not dating. God, he’s like, a day and a half out of a two or whatever year relationship. 

“Okay,” Cassandra says gently, quietly. Like their mom does when she’s trying to be delicate about something but has more to say. Allie hates it. Hates that this is a thing Cassandra’s learned to do. “This is all just really serious, and I’m not sure now is the time to…”

“To what?” Allie says, sounding mean. She stops, breathes. Cassandra’s just looking at her. “To become friends with someone you’ve decided you hate?”

“I don’t hate him, Allie,” Cassandra sighs. She shakes her head, and Allie crosses her arms. “I just can’t see him getting on board with what we need to do to keep some kind of order.”

“Why not?” Allie asks, because even in their limited interaction these past couple days, she’s been feeling like no one really _knows_ Harry. She thinks he almost likes it that way. But she does think it means people make assumptions about him that may not be true. 

“He’s not known for his agreeable nature.”

“With you,” Allie mutters, and Cassandra’s brow furrows. Allie figures she needs to clarify. “He doesn’t tend to agree with you.”

Cassandra smiles blithely, tilts her head. “You think he’ll be different with _you_?”

Allie wants to spit out _’he already is’_ , but manages to hold it back, and instead say, “I think he’s less defensive,” which seems safer. “If you’re worried about him not just doing what you say, though, maybe the problem is you.”

“Allie,” Cassandra says, sounding tired. 

“I’m just saying that it seems like we should at least try not to rule with an iron fist.”

Cassandra pauses. “We?” she asks. 

Allie hates that she’s the one feeling defensive now. The only reason anything is happening is because she begged. And if Cassandra now wants to pretend like she’s doing this single handedly, that feels really unfair. 

“We, as in everyone,” she says instead. “I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but giving 200 teenagers a bunch of rules they've never had to follow before probably won’t go over very well. The more leaders we have in agreement, the easier it’ll be.”

“Like a committee?” Cassandra asks, and Allie isn’t sure that was the word she had in mind, but sure. She shrugs her shoulder. “That’s a really good idea.”

Allie knows. She’s not an idiot.

… … …

He’s gassing up his car when he sees Allie in this cropped hoodie he thinks is sort of hot on her. The pissed off look on her face? Look, he doesn't think she could look ugly if she tried, but he just notices that when she looks this sour, it’s not his favourite. And he thinks, genuinely, it’s because he can tell she’s really upset and something’s wrong. 

“Planning a trip?” she says, snarky and rude, and his head pounds again, so he sighs and looks skyward. This shit is getting old.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, and the way she narrows her eyes and drops her backpack on the ground near him makes him realize maybe he could’ve been more delicate, or whatever. 

“Did you see the committee list?” 

He gives a look. “No. Why?”

Honestly, he’s sort of been voluntold he’s on the committee. He figured his name would be on there, so he didn’t rush to check the sheet like everyone else did today.

“She didn’t even pick me,” Allie says, and shit, he can tell she’s trying not to cry. He wonders if it’s because she’s sad or because she’s pissed. “This whole thing was…”

She stills, and Harry tilts his head. The nozzle clicks to let him know the tank’s full, so he replaces it, gives her his full attention. She was about to say something pretty fucking interesting, he thinks, and he definitely wants to hear the rest. He hasn’t seen Allie every day or anything, but when he does see her, he realizes he’s learning more and more about her. Probably now just because he’s paying attention, and they’re like, almost friends, or something. 

“What?” he asks gently, wanting her to continue. 

“Nothing,” she says, and it’s a complete lie, but she’s upset enough that he doesn’t think it’d be right to call her on it. “Nothing. It’s stupid. I just...thought she trusted me. But apparently she thinks I don’t have it in me to lead, or something.”

“Come on,” he says, almost laughing. That’s literally the dumbest shit he’s heard her say. She shakes her head like she doesn’t really want to argue about it or hear other possibilities. Which seems silly to him, but isn’t his call. “You can have my spot.”

He’s being serious. Allie rolls her eyes like he doesn’t get it. Maybe he would if she did a better job of expressing her feelings, or whatever. 

“That’s not how it works,” she says all quietly. He feels like she just wants to be sad and feel sorry for herself, and he’s kind of over trying to get her to stop it. 

“Okay, well. Why don’t you just tell me what you want me to say, then?” 

Yeah, that came out a lot shittier than he intended. The way she glares at him is at least a little hot. 

“Can we just like…” She puts a hand into her hair and then drops her arms by her sides, only to raise them again so they’re outstretched, and spins around in a circle. Harry smiles at her, because god, she can be so cute, ya know? Like, he doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing, but he likes watching her anyway. “I’d love to just be a fucking teenager, honestly.”

Harry raises his brow, tilts his head at her. “What’d you have in mind?”

So yeah, when she bites her lip, he’s definitely thinking about sex. It really feels like that’s not totally his fault, okay? 

And if he’s being really honest, he wonders if she’s thinking it, too.

“I just need a distraction,” she says, eyes locked with his. His head hurts. He sees the way she blink all slow before picking up her backpack, assumes she’s feeling it, too. “And you have a fast car.”

He revs the engine a bit once she gets in, likes the way she smiles in response like she’s excited, or something. When she clicks her seatbelt on, he pulls away from the gas station and tries not to think too hard about how easy it might be to make her feel better. 

He’d give so much to just be able to leave town and drive around with a hot girl next to him. And it feels fucked up in so many ways that he can’t. Like, obviously there are no _roads_ , so there’s that. But also the fact that Allie’s still almost vibrating with angry energy next to him, even though he can tell she likes the sound of the engine and the fact that he’s a good driver, or whatever. He doesn’t think she was lying about wanting a distraction, and if there’s a thing he knows about himself, it’s that he’s really good at this. At forgetting the awful shit. Because he does it for himself enough. And sure, he could probably use his anti-anxiety meds and sips of alcohol a little more sparingly to do that, but it’s been a rough bunch of days. 

“How are you doing?” she asks him as they cruise around, turning left on Cortland. He remembers his mom complaining about this neighbourhood, because she didn’t like the president of the homeowner’s association, or something. 

“I’m good.”

“No,” Allie says, then leans her elbow on the centre console, rests her hand on her chin and stares at him. They’ve been this close before, obviously - they’ve _kissed_ a couple times - but this feels intimate in a way he thinks he was unprepared for. “How are _you_?”

It’s a little fucked up that just her change in inflection makes him understand what she’s asking. She doesn’t mean today, right now, this moment, driving around wasting time and gas with her. She means with everything, in general. It’s not like they’ve had a bunch of time to talk recently. He said hey to her in passing at the meeting the other night, but she was with Cassandra and Will and he just...Doesn’t have energy for those two on a good day. And that day wasn’t a good day.

“I’m...fine,” he says, and then wants to roll his eyes, because that wasn’t even convincing to him. Allie’s still just looking at him. He slows to go around a bend, wonders if the little forklift parked in that driveway could be in any way useful for them. Which is a stupid thought. “I’m fine.”

Yeah, saying it twice didn’t help, either. 

Allie moves, leaves her arm on the console and then reaches up, runs her index finger over the stitching on the gear shift. That’s a little hot, too. He sort of itches to tell her so, or to reach over and hook his finger around hers. But he’s not going to. 

“I was thinking about you the other day.”

Harry’s brow goes up and he glances at her sideways. She’s smiling a little like she’s only just realized exactly what she’s said. 

“Were you, now?”

She breathes out a laugh through her nose, nods, her hair falling in her face prettily. “Yeah,” she says, and like, that’s an interesting response to this flirtation they’ve got going on right now. He likes it. “Just...I’ve got Cassandra, Sam and Will at home. I was thinking about how you’re all alone.”

He smirks at her, leans over so he’s resting on his arm, shoulder closer to her. He can almost imagine what it’d be like if she were the one, in the real world, or whatever, who he’d drive to school and hold hands with in the hallway. 

“You could keep me company,” he says, his voice sounding all low the way that usually gets him the result he wants from girls. 

Allie smiles over at him, then removes her hand from the gear shift, leans back in her seat. 

“You could come stay with us,” she suggests, and it sounds like she knows what he’ll say before he even speaks. 

“I like my house, thanks,” he says, instead of like, ‘fuck that’. “You all could come live with me.”

Allie glances over as if to ask if he really means that. He doesn’t respond. Because he doesn’t know if he does. It does suck being alone, but he can’t say he cares too much for the idea of having a house full of people he barely likes. Allie’s the exception. Obviously. 

“You say too many things you don’t mean,” she whispers. 

His foot presses on the brake when the headache slams into him, and then she’s saying his name a little frantically, and they’re stopped in the middle of the street. Which obviously doesn’t matter, because there’re no cars on the road and no one else is around. Allie slides her hand up his arm and across his shoulder to sit in the middle of his back, and he registers, through the pain, that it feels _nice_. He takes some deep breaths, leaves his eyes closed, and Allie pushes the gear shift into park. He registers that as she does it, and lets his foot slip off the pedal. 

“Maybe I should stop talking to you,” she says gently, teasing, like she’s scared, or something. 

Before he can filter it, he says, “Please don’t,” and worries he sounds pathetic, but then her hand is sliding up over his neck, into his hair, and he knows it’s fucked up that his heart beats faster. It just feels so good. The pain in his head begins to fade away, and he turns and opens his eyes, looks at her. “Sorry.” 

She shakes her head. She probably thinks he’s apologizing for the abrupt stop. Maybe he is. He’s confused, okay? Because he knows it’s dangerous and they’re saved by the fact the streets are empty. But he’s also probably apologizing for making it feel all too heavy with what he’s just like, begged of her. 

“You know, this doesn’t do anything to convince me you’re actually okay,” she says, lips just barely curving into a grin. He laughs a little, figures he can drive again, puts the car in drive and eases his foot onto the gas. 

“Honestly?” he asks like a question, and she nods, prompting him. “I’m kind of used to it? Being alone.” She doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure why he thought he could get away with just saying that and not explaining more. “I dunno. It’s been quiet around my house for months now.”

Please, _please_ let her get what he’s saying. He does not want to talk about how much it’s sucked to be home since his dad died. 

She just says, “Okay,” which he appreciates, and then says, “Well, the offer stands.”

“Right. You can convince Cassandra to make me your roomie?” he asks, and that feels like a gigantic fucking barrier. Not that he’s into the idea anyway; he really doesn’t want to leave his place. 

There’s something he can’t name in her tone when she says, “I’m actually pretty good at convincing her of things.”

She doesn’t say anything more, and he doesn’t want to push it. So he leaves it alone. He wonders if there’ll come a day when she stops protecting her sister by way of not telling Harry the full story. But then, he has no reason to think that she would. He knows where her loyalty lies. 

It’s a fucked up thought, but he thinks it anyway, in passing: He’s got something else to be jealous of Cassandra for now.

… … …

Cassandra sleeps late the day of the first official committee meeting. Which is weird, because just last night she was talking about wanting to be fully prepared for all the possible rebuttals she might get to the things she’s going to propose, and to have a proper agenda she can moderate. Allie doesn’t know how it’ll go. And she won’t find out, because she won’t be there. 

But Cassandra went to bed early and is sleeping late and Gordie shows up and seems surprised by this, too, and Allie is just _worried_.

Her sister is awake when Allie walks in. Her skin is pale in a way that is way too familiar, and she’s sweating, and she gives Allie a look that says, _”Don’t.”_

Allie feels like she’s going to cry already. 

“What’s...Where are your pills?” she asks, frantic, looking atop Cassandra’s dresser into the little box she keeps the yellow bottle in. It’s there. There’re pills rattling around in it. What the _fuck_?

“I’m…” Cassandra pauses and Allie stares at her. “Stretching them out.” Allie feels her chin moving, then presses her lips together. She’s torn between being devastated and incredibly pissed off. “These are all I have.”

Allie starts breathing heavier. Once these pills are gone…

“That’s...You’re…”

“I was doing fine with one every three days. So I stretched to four. Too far, I guess.” Cassandra smiles a little. It makes Allie _mad_. Like, how dare she _joke_? 

Allie twists the top off, shakes out one of the pills and hands it to Cassandra. She’s furious that at no point did Cassandra get up and do this herself. Why not? What stopped her? Does she _want_ to die? The _meeting_ is today. If she couldn’t get herself sorted enough to take her medication today, what’s she saving it for?

“We’ll find more. I’ll find more,” Allie promises, and though she feels confident because of sheer force of will, she doesn’t exactly know how to accomplish it. “You can’t just…”

 _Die_.

“Allie,” Cassandra says after swallowing the pill. Allie grabs an old camisole out of Cassandra’s dresser and begins dabbing at the sweat on her sister’s forehead and neck. She’s avoiding Cassandra’s eyes, but then her sister grabs her wrist and Allie finally looks at her. “We have to deal with this eventually.”

“Eventually,” Allie whispers, and a tear falls, which she hates, and she adds, “but not today.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Allie wants to go start the shower, wants to go prepare some food. Cassandra needs to look like she’s in good health when they show up at the church, and Allie can help with that. 

“Come to the meeting,” Cassandra says. Allie freezes, furrows her brow. “We need a minute-taker, right?”

Allie should be flattered not insulted, so she’s focusing on the invite, not the reason behind it. She nods her head and says she’ll be there. 

She cries in her room while Cassandra is in the shower, pulls herself together enough to go make some tea and toast, and tells Sam she’s fine when he asks. 

… … …

One minute, the meeting’s going fine, and the next…

Okay, when he says ‘fine’, he means it’s like, boring and annoying and Cassandra’s saying they should ‘set decorum’ and insists they make all decisions only if there’s consensus, and if they can’t do that they need to keep discussing until they get there. Harry doesn’t disagree with _that_ , necessarily, so he puts up his hand when they vote on it. But he does think it’s going to be fucking dificult and that is proven when she brings the first order of business, which is housing. 

Allie’s sitting behind her sister in a pew, a laptop open as she types, recording the conversation. She’s right in Harry’s line of sight and he doesn’t want to be suspicious of their conversation yesterday, okay? But he is, at least a little. The timing is too tight to be coincidental. There’s no way the discussion of people bunking up didn’t come up between her and Cassandra before Allie said anything to him about him being all alone. Part of him is bothered she didn’t just tell him he should expect to have his situation change. But maybe that’s what she was doing and he should’ve paid closer attention, you know? 

Anyway, one minute, the meeting’s going fine, and the next Campbell’s walking in, saying something about how his invitation must’ve been left off, or something, and asking if Cassandra really thinks she’s equipped to make these decisions. To her credit, she says no, and that’s why they’re doing things by committee and no single person is in charge. 

Harry sees the gun at Campbell’s waist before he pulls it out. It’s fucking terrifying. Campbell’s standing right next to Allie and Harry feels like his vision blurs as he thinks about what could happen to her just because she happens to be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then Campbell’s pointing the thing at Cassandra, and Harry stands up too quickly when Allie gets up and stands in front of her sister.

What the _fuck_ is she doing?

Cassandra gently pushes her out of the way, _thank god_ , and sort of in Harry’s direction. Allie doesn’t move too far, clutches her sister’s hand. Harry doesn’t even really mean to move towards them, but he pushes past Kelly and Luke and closer to her. To Allie. To the fucking _gun_.

He mostly zones out, honestly, as he tries to regulate his anxiety in this incredibly fucked up situation he knows none of them would be in if they weren’t _here_. Cassandra’s talking, and Campbell’s face seems to change with the realization that she’s not fucking scared of him, or something. Like he’s less interested in carrying all this on if it isn’t getting to her. Harry can’t let himself think about that too much because it hurts his fucking brain, okay? It’s some terrifying shit and he needs to keep his sanity. 

As Campbell leaves the church, Allie reaches back for Harry’s hand, he thinks. What happens instead is her hand brushes the front of his thigh briefly, then moves to grip his fingers, holding tightly before letting go. 

… … …

Allie’s on her bed, her thumbnail worried between her teeth, when she finally gives in and texts him, _’I need your help. Can I come over?’_

She knows she could ask Gordie or Will for help, except Cassandra doesn’t want to involve them, but also doesn’t want Allie going on this ‘mission’ alone, or whatever. Which leaves her with limited options. Not that she doesn’t think she can do it by herself, but she also doesn’t hate the idea of having company, and despite all prior instincts to the contrary, she actually trusts Harry. He’s given her no reason not to since they started this...Friendship, or whatever. 

He hasn’t told anyone about the kisses or the headaches, and she thinks that if she asks him, he won’t tell anyone about this, either.

He replies almost instantly, saying, _’Sure.’_

She grabs her backpack - which he keeps making fun of her for carrying around. But this time, she has a reason to, okay? She has things to carry.

She grabs the keys off the hook by the door, tells Cassandra she’s going out for a bit and doesn’t specify where or for how long. But there are no followup questions for her, either. It’s still weird to not have her mom says, “Hold on. Details,” before Allie leaves the house. Her heart aches. God, she wishes she’d realized how amazing her mom was before all this shit. It feels really unfair.

She still only has her learner’s permit, because she just...doesn’t care? About driving? She’s not bad at it, or anything. Actually, her dad told her she’s better at it than Cassandra was when she was just learning, too. She just isn’t in a rush and lives in a small town and doesn’t require access to a vehicle for much, honestly. 

She drives the Toyota through town towards Harry’s, going too slowly, probably, but also knowing it doesn’t matter because it’s late and dark and no one else is really around. She rings the bell and hears it echo through the house. 

When he opens the door, he looks like, really, really good in jeans and a white tee shirt with his hair curling on his head the way it usually does when it’s late in the day and it’s gotten a little messy. It’s absolutely stupid that she notices that kind of thing about him, but...She’s learning, with Harry, that it’s hard _not_ to notice. He looks her up and down and then smiles, leaning against the door. She tries hard to keep from smiling back, because ugh. She hates that she _likes_ his attention. It’s such a stereotype. She’s literally wearing the jeans she always wears, sneakers, and a pink sweatshirt that she bought just a few weeks before their trip and hasn’t worn yet. 

“Can I come in?” she asks, and Harry swings the door open and she walks through, drops her backpack and toes her shoes off. 

He leads her though to the living room, flops down on the sofa in a way that is so nonchalant and lazy, like a person would only ever do in their own house. Allie chooses a navy blue armchair and angles her body towards his. 

“What’s up?”

Instead of telling him what she needs, she asks, “Enjoying your last days of isolation?”

He scoffs, gives her a shitty look. Or a look like she's being shitty. She can’t tell. Either way, she smiles in return. 

The members of the council who aren’t living at her house will be living in this house, with the exception of Helena and Luke. So it’s not that many people, or whatever, and at least he sort of knows them and it won’t be the worst. It’s what she told him when things were decided. Sam and Becca are both moving here because there’s more space for them and they won’t have to bunk up in the basement spare room like they were doing at Allie’s. And Grizz is coming, too, because he’s been alone in his house and realized it’s silly to continue doing that. Bean, Gordie and Will will continue to live with her and Cassandra. 

Anyway, Allie reminding him that tomorrow is moving day was maybe rude, or something, but also this house is absolutely massive and she knows his room is practically an apartment, so it isn’t like he’ll have to sacrifice too much. She doesn't feel too badly if she’s being honest.

“Okay, moving on,” she says, and he rolls his eyes, but cracks a smile at her. “How do you feel about breaking into a few pharmacies?”

He blinks, surprised, and then looks confused and a little dumb, and then sits up, puts his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands. 

“What?”

She bites her lip. She knew she’d have to tell him, even rehearsed in her head how to say it, but now that he’s sitting there asking, the words get all tangled up in her mouth. 

“I just...need something.” He tilts his head, says something about how that’s not a good enough answer. She wants to bite out something about not being aware of his moral superiority complex, but it’s shitty and wouldn’t help. “Cassandra needs this heart medication to live.”

His brows come together, then he takes a deep breath. “You’re serious.” She nods, not wanting to have to give him all the details. Maybe that’s unfair, considering what she’s asking him to do. “And I assume she’s running out.”

Allie swallows thickly, nods. Maybe it’s fine if Harry sees her cry. She just doesn’t _want to_. She’s been crying about this same thing, in some form or another, for years. 

“I mean, even if we can get…” She stops. He’s just watching her, waiting. There’s something tender in his eyes, like he genuinely cares and is being sort of soft about this. She can’t think too hard about that right now. “We’re obviously limited to whatever’s left, which…”

“Okay,” he says, a little choked. Then he stands up, tugs his jeans up by the belt loops. It’s definitely not the time to think that’s attractive. “I’m in.”

Allie stands up, not knowing what to say, and settles instead on throwing her arms around him, burying her face against his neck. God, he smells so good, despite her constant jabs about his cologne. And when he puts his hands on her back, they’re warm and heavy in a way that makes her feel so incredible it’s literally the only thing that makes her pull away. She can’t like, let herself have these thoughts about him. 

“I think we should do the hospital first, and then clinics if we have to,” she says, and his brow furrows. “The actual drug stores have cages, and we don’t have the keys. There’s...We shouldn’t give everyone access to all that shit.” Realization seems to dawn on his face, and he nods. She wonders if Harry might just go along with anything she said, if she had a good enough argument. “At least we can hide things in the hospital. And maybe there’re keys to cupboards, or whatever.”

“You’ve thought this through,” he says, like it’s just a fact. Which it is. She shrugs. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Hey, uh, can I...I mean, I could use…” Allie just watches, thinking she knows where this is going. She wants to give him space to say it out loud. “I have a prescription.”

Honestly, that’s not a good enough answer. 

“A lot of people probably have prescriptions, Harry,” she says delicately. God, most of these girls are probably on birth control, and Allie’s trying not to think of what’s going to happen when they run out. 

“For anxiety,” is all he says, and Allie knows she looks surprised, which she sort of hates. It doesn’t seem fair to do to him, to make him think she’s judging, or something. Because she’s not. She knows mental illness can affect anyone, and the fact that he’s popular and hot and rich doesn’t mean he’s immune. 

“Okay,” she says, nodding, and hopes he knows this means she’s going to help him get what she needs. She doesn’t think he was really asking permission, even if that’s how he worded it. “Maybe we should like, properly inventory things. At some point.”

“Yeah,” he says softly, looking almost embarrassed. She hates that for him. “That’s a really good idea.” Allie smiles at his approval, not needing it, but liking it anyway. “So why are we doing this at night?”

She laughs without meaning to, then shrugs. “I don’t want people to see us doing it.”

She _sees_ the way he’s interpreting that, and if he makes a comment she is absolutely going to call him on taking a simple sentence and turning it into an elementary colloquialism. 

He just puts his hands on his hips again. (Still not the time to think about it being attractive…) “Covert ops. Feels like you were born for this, or something.” She furrows her brow. Is that a dig about her being invisible, or something? “You’re smart as fuck.”

She laughs loudly, shoves at his chest to make this feel less like a compliment, and tells him they should get going. She doesn’t argue when he says he’ll drive, because she doesn’t want him making fun of her for her limited ability and comfort level behind the wheel, but also because as much as she hates to admit it, that thing that Cassandra said is proving true. She does like being in Harry’s car. He’s a good driver. He looks good driving. And sitting next to him in his car is one of the few things lately that makes her feel like any of this is close to normal. Like if she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine she’s just a teenager riding around town with a boy. 

They walk in through the emergency doors to the hospital, and Harry asks her why they aren’t locked. She gives him a little look, reminds him emergency rooms are 24/7 spaces, and he makes a face like he had a moment of stupidity. She doesn’t say anything about it. None of this is like, anything most of them have had to think about. 

It doesn’t take them long to find the medicine room. She figured it’d be like this; an actual room with a solid door rather than just a cage like in stores. Allie looks the door up and down, then tries the handle, which feels dumb, but not as dumb as it’d be to try to find a solution only to find out the problem didn’t exist. She’s watched enough movies to know you just always try the handle first, okay? 

“Now what?” Harry asks quietly, and she smiles a little, wondering why he’s not speaking full volume. 

“How strong are you?” she jokes, and he gives her a _look_ that makes her laugh. Something she thinks roughly translates to some comment about how his kind don’t use a lot of brute strength. That’s what she thinks, anyway. She pushes her hair off her shoulder and looks over to the desk that’s about 30 feet away. “There’ve gotta be keys somewhere in this place.”

“That could take hours.”

Allie clenches her teeth, squares her shoulders to his, tilts her chin up. “It’s worth it,” is all she says, instead of like, reminding him that Cassandra’s going to die. He just nods gently, and then he’s the first one to turn away and head for the desk. Allie, peripherally, thinks she might love him a little for that.

He sits down on one chair and she sits down on the other. She wants to sort of laugh at this, too. Like, there’s something so, so weird about sitting behind the desk like this. It feels so off limits - a place she never, ever would’ve been in in her previous life. 

She starts opening drawers but Harry’s not doing anything. His eyes are on her - she can feel it - and he says, “Wanna know what I think is weird?” Allie lets out a hum, but wants to ask him what _isn’t_ weird. “It doesn’t seem like people left.”

Allie looks at him. “What?”

“It doesn’t seem like they left. It feels like they were never here.” Allie blinks. She has not thought of it like that even once. But he’s absolutely right. “Like, if they’d evacuated patients…”

He doesn’t finish, but looks over his shoulder. The beds are all made. Everything is in its place. The papers and files are all stacked neatly. No sign of chaos.

“Thank you for that terrifying breakthrough,” she says, and Harry snorts. Even that isn’t unattractive on him. Allie rolls her eyes when he’s not looking, and moves into the next drawer. 

They get through all the drawers here, and Allie even, for some stupid reason, gets down on her knees and looks to see if there’s anything taped to the underside of the desk. Harry’s moved on to filing cabinets. Allie spots a little ‘authorized personnel only’ room off to the side that she identifies as a break room, of sorts, with a single stall washroom, a coffee maker and a water cooler. There’s a sad little table that’s uneven and leaning to one side, and chairs that look like they were put in here when the ones in the waiting room were replaced, or something. 

She steps back into the main area just in time to watch Harry put his hand in his hair at the top of his head. He hasn’t noticed her yet, so she just looks for a moment, lets herself appreciate the sight of him, shirt raised at his hip a little. She leans on the door frame and pretends, for a single, simple second, that he’s just some hot guy she’s laid eyes on and wants to look at a little more. 

Then he smiles to himself, says, “Fuck.” under his breath, and walks over to a bunch of hooks that’ve been nailed to the wall. There are several white coats hung there. Allie moves closer, just in time to see him pull a set of several keys out of one of the pockets. He holds it up for her. “Think it’s the one with the label _’Drugs’_ on it?”

Allie laughs, almost giddy, but really also almost _crying_ , and she could literally kiss him. She’s not going to. She could take the keys from him, but he found them and it’s not like the guy’s incapable of using a key in a lock competently. 

Once they’re inside, he finds the Xanax easily enough, pockets two bottles, and Allie searches for Cassandra’s pills. She knows exactly what she’s looking for, but doesn’t know how the hell this place is organized. Well, she can tell the stuff that’s probably used most often is by the door - if her limited knowledge of ERs that she’s gleaned from medical dramas on TV is accurate. It’s like, saline and epinephrine and pain and nausea medicine. As the minutes pass, she’s getting more and more worried that this closet in the emergency room is _not_ the place for medicine for a congenital heart defect. Harry asks what they’re looking for and she tells him the name, squeezes her shoulder gently and calmly tells her to take that side and he’ll take this one. She nods, knowing he’s directing her this way because he can tell this shit is making her anxious. 

After another 10 minutes, he finds two packages with six pills each. They’re samples. Allie knows enough about pharmaceutical companies and trials and shit at this point to know that. There’s gotta be more in this place. 

“Maybe it’s the same key for all drug storage,” he says optimistically. 

Allie presses her lips together and nods. Harry gives her this sad, but really actually beautiful look, and takes her by the hand. Not in the way that couples do, or whatever, where their fingers are between each others’. No, it’s like he’s pulling her along to get her to move because he can tell how upset she’s getting. His fingers are just wrapped around hers as they walk. She expects him to let go once they’re in the hall, but he doesn’t. He’s also smart enough to shove on the door and make sure it’s locked behind them. 

Allie follows him as he leads her down the hall. She’s a half step behind, trying to tell herself they’ll find something, okay? They will. She registers, sort of offhand, that he seems to know his way around. 

“Where are we going?” she asks. 

He says, “Palliative care’s on the second floor,” and she hears herself gasp. He slows, matches his strides with hers and then they’re just walking side by side. God, his _dad_. Of course. “Cardiology’s the next unit over.” She opens her mouth to say something, but closes it. What could she say? “I’ve practically got the signs memorized.”

He says it like a brag, but it’s the saddest fucking thing she’s ever heard. And the reason she didn't know where the cardiac unit is in this hospital is that Cassandra’s issues were always too serious for West Ham’s limited resources and experience, and she was always taken to Connecticut Children’s in Hartford. She thinks they’re as fucked up as each other.

Once they get there, Harry tries the key in the door and rolls his eyes when it works. “Classic West Ham,” he mutters, and Allie would laugh if her heart wasn’t pounding in her ears. 

This med room is better organized, and has a ton more types of medicine than the other one. Knowing they’re _all_ for heart issues makes Allie think there’s _some_ hope. Maybe once the thing Cassandra usually takes runs out, they could move to something else. She could have a huge supply if they can manage to cycle through these other things. Allie doesn’t know where to start thinking through what would treat her and what wouldn’t, but there’s a whole shelf of books in here for medicines and their uses and whatever. 

Harry’s looking right at her when she starts crying. She ignores the sympathetic look on his face and just continues looking. It doesn’t take long to find; this room is organized alphabetically, which makes a lot more fucking sense than whatever was going on in emerg. There are 12 bottles of pills here. That’s...over 1,000 days of medication. And as much as Allie hates to fucking think of the consequences of it, if Cassandra could do one pill every other day, that doubles it. And this is just the first place they’ve looked. 

Allie puts her head in her hands and lets out a stupid sob, lets herself drop to the floor, kneeling. Harry’s next to her, then, his hand smoothing over her hair, smiling at her like…

God, he’s looking at her like this is their victory, or something, and she doesn’t even really think he _gets it_. But god, she is so glad that he’s the one here with her. 

Then he says, “You did it,” and she wants to _lose it_.

“Thank you,” she breathes quietly, and he gives her a lopsided grin as if to ask if she really thought he wouldn’t help. And like, the thought totally crossed her mind. He doesn’t owe her anything. He sure as hell doesn’t owe Cassandra anything. 

He stands, reaches his hands down and pulls her up, and god, he looks so stupidly good even under shitty fluorescent lighting, and they’re standing close together between these shelves, and they’re literally the only two people in this building. And he just helped her save her sister’s life. 

She leans her hands against him, just below his chest, and tilts her head up to kiss him. It’s quick and not particularly _gentle_ really, and by the time his hand is bumping against her waist, she’s pulled away. 

He’s looking at her like he’s surprised, and she chews her bottom lip and looks away. God, why did she _do_ that? 

She reaches for her backpack off the floor and drops all 12 bottles inside. 

“Hey, should we…”

She cuts him off. 

“We don’t have to talk about it. I’m sorry. I...was saying thank you.”

Harry blinks slowly, which looks better than she wants to admit, and tilts his head, holds up the keys. “I was gonna ask if you think we should keep these.” Allie’s heart drops in her chest, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. The way he leans his elbow on the shelving, it’s as though he wants to further illustrate his ability to play this more casual than she can. “But if that’s how you say thank you, maybe I should be nicer to you.”

Okay, that is _so_ fucking ridiculous that all she can do is roll her eyes hard and zip her backpack. She snatches the keys away from him and pockets them, then pushes past him and into the hall. 

She hates that she doesn’t want to be _alone_ here, and is comforted by his presence when he joins her. 

They walk about 15 paces before he says, “Hey,” and she looks over with hesitation. She doesn’t need more teasing. He isn’t even smiling. He seems thoughtful, or something. “No headache.”

She takes a deep breath. “You’re right.”

Like, if he’s gonna state a fact, that’s how she’s gonna respond. 

“Are we still not going to talk about this shit?” he asks, sounding mildly perturbed but in the way that makes it sound like an inconvenience and not something he’s really pressed about. “It still hasn’t happened, for me, with anyone else.”

“Maybe I really am just a pain in the ass, then.”

“Allie.” He takes her elbow gently in his hand and stops walking, so she turns around and looks at him. His touch gets even softer. She looks down at his hand and then he lets go. Good. “This place is fucked up enough, okay? Without...this.”

“It’s not my fault you get all distracted, or whatever, when I kiss you.”

He narrows his eyes. “Technically that’s the first time you’ve kissed me and not the other way around. So don’t be cute.”

Allie smiles sweetly up at him and he seems to realize his mistake. His mistake being that he’s challenged her.

“I think you like me cute, Harry,” she says, and watches him close his mouth like _that_ wasn’t what he was expecting her to say right now. 

He doesn’t argue. So there’s that, too. 

She laughs, turns on her heel and continues walking. Harry follows. And no, she _doesn’t_ want to talk about this thing between them, because there’s nothing between them. They’re friends, And she’s starting to really like that. She likes that she can talk to him, likes that he listens to her. And she also really likes that it seems like he tells her things, too, that he maybe doesn’t tell other people. She’s literally never heard him talk about his dad even vaguely. For him to have said what he did earlier about even the time he spent in hospital feels like a big deal. 

Allie’s got a bad habit of having really good friendships with guys and then fucking them all up. She doesn’t want to do that now. It’s already awkward enough with Will. She appreciates what she and Harry have going. She feels stupid for potentially messing it up by kissing him. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, because it feels important. “For randomly kissing you.”

He scoffs, brows pinched together when she looks over as they walk into the stairwell again. “You really don’t have to apologize,” he says, and for the first time, maybe, he doesn’t make it sound like he’s flirting. He’s really just...maybe he doesn’t think kissing is a big deal. “I never even said it was a good kiss.”

Allie stops, jaw dropped, and god, it is _so_ stupid to be offended by that, isn’t it? She doesn’t give a shit if Harry thinks she’s a good kisser. 

(Except she really, really does. Okay? It feels important.)

The stupid grin on his face lets her know he knows _exactly_ what he’s doing. 

“I’ve never had any complaints,” she tells him, slipping her hand into her back pocket. She leans her shoulders back against the wall and watches his eyes drop down to check her out. Predictable. “So maybe it’s you.”

“Fuck off,” he laughs, and Allie pushes herself off the wall and runs down the stairs, the sound of his laughter and their footsteps echoing through the empty space around them. 

She fumbles with the keys once they’re outside, locks the emergency room doors. God, he was so right earlier - it’s incredibly stupid and very on brand for this town that the keys would all be kept on one ring. She feels a little better knowing the building is more secure now. She can only imagine how many opioids are inside and how fucked they’d be if someone else got here first. She’s more sure than ever that they need to know exactly what’s here and how much of it. But that feels like a problem for tomorrow. 

She yawns once she’s in the car, and she’s half asleep by the time Harry’s pulling into his driveway. He laughs softly, leans on the wheel and turns to her. 

“You’re definitely not okay to drive.” She blinks heavily and knows he’s right. The clock on the dash says it’s 1:00am. Did they really take that long? “You can stay here, or I can drop you off.”

Allie knows without a doubt that her first instinct - to stay at Harry’s - is driven almost entirely by two things: exhaustion and hormones. Which are two things that definitely do not need to go together. She can’t imagine going all the way across town to her own house and trudging up the stairs. She also thinks Harry looks absolutely absurdly good in this dim lighting, the motion lights on at the front of his garage, and that...She’s never seen him this late at night and sort of wants to file the memory away. 

Shit. She hasn’t checked her phone in hours, maybe. She pulls it out, sees missed texts from both Cassandra and Will. She types back to them both that she’s totally fine. 

She thinks back to earlier, to mentioning he’s getting roommates soon, and then feels really flattered and kind of lovely that he’s chosen to spend his last night alone with _her_ , and that he’s okay extending it by suggesting she can stay. 

“My sister is going to lose her mind,” she says, and Harry’s lips twitch. “You don’t mind if I stay?”

He shakes his head silently, cuts the engine and they get out of the car. The night air is as chilly as it was when they left the hospital, but Allie’s feeling it more now. She wraps her arms around herself and follows him into the house. She knows where the guest rooms are. She knows those beds are huge. She kind of just wants a glass of water and to take off her jeans and fall into one of those beds and sleep until morning. She follows Harry wordlessly up the stairs, her backpack still over her shoulder because she’s fiercely guarding what’s inside. It feels weird, now, that all their joking from the hospital is gone. She chalks it up to exhaustion. 

Harry looks over his shoulder just after she’s removed her gaze from his butt. So. Thank god for small miracles. 

“You wanna be next to me, or down the hall?” he asks. Allie’s heart races, and she feels…

He’s talking about the spare room, for fuck’s sake. Not next to him _in his bed_.

Answering, “Wherever you want,” is absolutely stupid and she regrets it immediately. Harry just bends his head a little, hand moving to the back of his neck as he looks at her from under his lashes. “Next to, I guess.”

He nods once, pushes open the door to the spare room. She thinks he’s just mimicking things he’s heard before when he asks if she has everything she needs, and like, she’d honestly love a toothbrush and her whole skincare routine and her pajamas, but…

He says, “Goodnight,” and that sounds _good_ , and he pulls the door closed and Allie closes her eyes tight, hoping she didn’t just come off like as much of an idiot as she worries she did. 

She lets her jeans pool at her feet and gets into bed, the mattress exactly as comfortable as she was expecting it to be. She can hear Harry moving about in his room next door, though that, too, goes quiet after a few minutes. It’s so late, and she’d be surprised if he stayed up, too. She feels...Thankful, of course, but also just really happy that he’d been so willing to help her with such a huge task and on such short notice. They must be friends, properly. She’d never do something like that for someone who wasn’t a friend. She can’t imagine Harry doing it, either. 

Despite feeling tired down to her bones, her eyes are wide awake. She doesn’t know this house or this neighbourhood. The sounds here are different and every little one makes her stir, sends her heart racing. There’s nothing to be afraid of, she tells herself - Harry’s the only other person in this house. But maybe that’s the problem. This huge place with only one other person in it. Sort of like it had felt when she’d stepped into the hallway alone at the hospital. Like there’s something really, really eerie about big places being so empty. It’s different than at her house, where there are people everywhere and she knows exactly who and where they are. 

She doesn’t bother pulling her jeans on, though she grabs them and her backpack off the floor. She also doesn’t bother knocking on his door, which is probably rude, or whatever. Harry leans up in bed, switches his bedside light on. Which...She just wishes he hadn’t, because she was sort of counting on the darkness given that she’s _not wearing pants_. God, she could’ve thought that through a little more. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, and she nods quickly, moves to the side of the bed he’s not occupying, and tries to ignore the absolutely fucking adorable look on his face when she gets in next to him. “What are you doing?”

She pulls his stupid plaid covers up over her shoulder and thinks it would be especially rude to turn her back to him, so she turns on her side so she’s facing him. “Your big empty house is creeping me out.”

“Ah.”

He switches off the light again. She’s absolutely shocked he’s not mentioning that he’s seen her in her underwear. 

“Buddy system,” she says quietly. Harry lets out a little laugh, then takes a deep breath like maybe he feels better about this now, too. She’s thankful he doesn’t say anything, either, about how she didn’t even last 15 minutes on her own. “Is this okay?”

It’s important. She’s probably awake enough now to drive home. She just doesn’t want to. 

“Yeah,” he breathes out. Allie’s never cuddled with anyone in a bed before. She...It’s not that she wants to do it with Harry. It’s just that she thinks about it for half a second. “Night.” He pauses, then turns to face her, too. She can barely make out his face in the darkness, then closes her eyes. “Buddy.”

She smiles and takes a deep breath. If she tried to count to 20 before she fell asleep, she probably wouldn’t even make it. 

… … …

Waking up with someone pressed all up against his back is new. Not new in the sense that he’s never done it before, but new in the sense that It’s been ages and he doesn’t have a girlfriend anymore. Last night comes rushing back to him, Allie stepping into his room in just her sweater, more confidently than he would’ve expected from her, and getting into his bed. 

He doesn't want to wake her, but he does want to turn and get another look at her. Which is..becoming kind of a thing. She’s hot, and she trusts him, and she makes him laugh. And they keep ending up kissing, which is a bit of a surprise and a mindfuck, but it weirdly doesn’t even feel like, romantic, or whatever, when they do it. With the exception of the very first time he kissed her, which feels like ages ago now, it hasn’t even been like that. He doesn’t have it in him right now to think too hard about that. 

He checks the time and then has a mild panic, realizing people are probably going to start turning up soon. He’s pretty sure she won’t want her friends to see her emerging from his bedroom without her pants on. Not that she’d…

Okay, he should probably let that go. 

(She’s got nice legs. And her underwear are navy blue. He noticed that even though he very deliberately tried not to look.)

He turns onto his back, feeling less badly about waking her, having remembered the occasion and knowing it’d be worse if he let her sleep for ages. Her back’s to him, which means where they were all pressed together was just her ass against the small of his back and her feet against his calves. Can’t say he hates it. 

Her hair is an absolute wreck, and she has the covers pulled up and tucked under her arm. Her sweater is clashing with his sheets, and he distantly thinks about how _girly_ she looks - all blonde hair, pale skin and pink shirt - against his dark sheets and plaid pillows.

She wasn’t wrong last night when she said that he likes her cute. 

He gently reaches over and touches her upper arm, smiling when she lets out a little groan and shrugs him off, turning away a little more, closer to the edge of the bed. He just tries again, and she flips over quickly, pinning with a glare that almost makes him regret nudging her at all. She looks tired, too, beneath her annoyance. 

“What?”

He grins, hoping it’ll disarm her a little. She just blinks. Right. Okay. “It’s almost 10:00.” 

He also registers that she doesn’t seem remotely confused or bothered to be waking up with him in his bed. So that’s interesting, too. 

She flops back on the pillow, lying flat on her back next to him. He sort of itches to touch her, so he goes for it, reaching over and setting his hand on her stomach over the covers. She presses her fingers into her eyes and yawns, but doesn’t seem to take issue with anything else.

“Your bed is comfortable,” she says, suddenly all sweet, and turns to face him. It makes his hand move to her hip, which he also doesn’t hate. 

“I know.”

“Sorry I barged in.”

“It’s fine,” he says softly, and Allie blinks adorably. Harry thinks this is starting to feel weirdly too comfortable considering they’re friends, or whatever. 

God, he can remember waking up next to Kelly, the few times they were actually able to sleep next to one another. It was like, exactly the same as this, just with more kissing. Maybe more touching but not always. 

Harry moves his hand. 

“I should get home,” she says out of nowhere, and Harry just nods, because like, she’s right, but also he has no fucking good reason for wanting, personally, for them not to move. “Your hair’s a mess.”

He rolls his eyes and she laughs when he reaches up and tries to fix whatever it is that’s wrong. He looks at her hair - it’s an absolute disaster, but he doesn’t feel like mentioning it. 

Her sweater rides up at her back when she reaches over the side of the bed to grab her jeans. Maybe she thinks he doesn’t see, but he absolutely does, and notices the little freckles on her back. He leans back over, lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling. 

_Fuck_.

Allie pulls her jeans up under the covers. Harry tries not to think too much about the way she lifts her hips up, shoulders pressed to the mattress. When she throws back the covers, she puts her feet on the floor and bends down to grab her backpack. Harry just wants a shower and a cup of coffee before everyone shows up and he does his best to act like it’s fine and helps them settle, or however this is gonna go.

“Hey, um,” she starts, and then tosses her messy hair over her shoulder and grips the strap of her backpack tightly in her hand. “Thanks again. For last night.”

Harry nods, not even bothering to take advantage of the myriad jokes he could make here. (Right on the tip of his tongue is a comment about how she thanked him last night, and requesting she could do that again if she wanted. It just doesn't really feel like a joke.)

“Yeah. No problem.” 

She presses her lips into a line and then smiles at him. He’s not sure he’s ever seen this look on her face before. It’s soft and pretty and makes him think there’s more she wants to say and is holding back. 

“I’ll see you later?”

“See ya,” he replies, and Allie heads for the door. She turns and gives him a cute wave before walking out, pulling the door closed behind her. 

Harry needs to get his shit together, okay? He’s not got a bunch of actual friends, and he thinks Allie is genuinely one of them. He’s not going to mess it up by acting on something early and new and definitely barely getting its legs. And he can be friends with girls, okay? He never has before, not really, but he can do it. It can’t be that fucking hard; people do it all the time. And he’s sort of friends with Kelly. Maybe. Actually, it feels less like a friendship and more like they’re two people who care about each other despite being kind of shit together. 

He hears Allie’s car pull out of his driveway and gets up, heads for the shower. 

His hair _is_ a mess. 

… … ...

Prom is Kelly’s idea. Cassandra floats it to the committee and they unanimously agree they should do it. Becca seems bothered about it, but votes yes anyway. Allie just watches her, wondering what’s going on with her. Harry’s looking bored, as is typical in these meetings, even though she knows he’s absolutely paying attention and is more engaged than he lets on. She thinks, truly, that he just doesn’t want to give Cassandra the satisfaction of having this entire group of people bow at her feet. Allie sort of gets that, if she’s being honest. She’s not going to say that to anyone, obviously. Not even him. 

“Hey, buddy,” he says, and Allie rolls her eyes, a tiny smile playing on her lips. Him calling her buddy, like a nickname, is something he’s started doing the last few days. She thinks he’s doing it only to see if it pisses her off. She actually sort of likes it. 

“Hey.”

“You gonna go?” he asks her afterward as they’re all leaving. They moved today’s meeting to his house, actually; so it’s really just some of them who are leaving. 

“Go where?” she asks, and he rolls his eyes. Right. Prom. “Oh. I dunno.”

“Why not?” 

She tilts her head at him, smiles like he’s being cute and should maybe know the answer. But that’s silly, too, because why would he. “I don’t have a date. I wasn’t going to go originally.”

Becca scoffs behind them, nearly choking on her water. “Must be why you bought a $350 dress.”

Harry’s grin is slick and fast, one brow arching. “I could be your date.”

Over his shoulder, Becca’s eyes go wide and she mouths, _’Say yes.’_

Absolutely not. She rolls her eyes and turns to leave, but then Becca’s reaching for her hand and asking for fashion advice. They go back upstairs, to the spare bedroom that is no longer a spare bedroom and is now Becca’s room. It looks...exactly like what Allie would’ve expected Becca’s room to look like if only she’d had more money to decorate at her own home. 

“What?” Allie asks, knowing this isn’t about a dress, or whatever. Becca tilts her head as if Allie’s being stupid. “ _What_?”

“Harry just asked you to prom? Like, Harry Bingham. Just asked you. To prom.”

Allie laughs out loud. “He did not. He didn’t ask. He made a stupid suggestion because he’s impulsive,” she argues. Becca sits down at the edge of her bed. Allie wants to go home. “I don’t even know if I’m gonna go. I don't want to commit and then be miserable.”

“Whatever you say,” Becca sing songs, and then actually does pull her black dress from the closet and holds it up. “I hope it still fits?”

Allie chuckles lowly. “Why wouldn’t it? You’re gonna look so good.”

“So are you,” Becca says, their eyes meeting in the mirror. 

Allie says goodbye, leaves, and passes Harry on the stairs on her way out. 

He says, “Think about it,” in a way that sounds like he’s teasing her, which she finds very irritating, actually.

But then she does think about it, and like, literally everyone else is going. What’s she gonna do instead? And is she willing to be the only one in town who doesn’t go to prom? Is she going to have to listen to everyone’s stories about the night and be the one who has no context or information? It seems stupid to not go. Especially when she returns home and it becomes super, super clear that all the people in her house are going, Will included. He says something about wanting to support Kelly. Allie presses her tongue against the back of her teeth to keep herself from saying the most popular girl in school probably doesn’t need his moral support. It’s unfair and mean and she doesn’t want to take this out on Kelly. And she’s starting to feel like she’s just bitter about Will, but doesn’t actually even still feel _hurt_.

But she also isn’t going to message Harry right away. 

What she does instead is seek him out the next day, when she’s finishing up her shift in the cafeteria and he’s walking down the sidewalk with a hand in his pocket. 

“One condition,” she says, and he frowns slightly at her. “No, two.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Prom.” He smiles slowly, crosses his arms, then nods once, prompting her to continue. “Neither of us gets stupid drunk.” She counts off on her index finger, then taps her middle finger, too, when he doesn’t say anything or react at all. “I am absolutely not going to sleep with you.”

He laughs, loud and crisp, and then steps closer and leans his head towards hers a little. “I think your idea of what I’m like as a prom date is a little inaccurate.” Allie just looks up at him. She feels silly, for some reason, even though she shouldn’t. She thinks her rules are sound. “I’m a gentleman.” 

She worries already that she’s going to regret this. 

The night of the dance, she’s in the bathroom fussing with her hair and Cassandra is doing her makeup. 

“So,” Cassandra says, sounding very much like their mom. So much so that Allie’s heart squeezes. “Harry’s taking you to prom.”

Allie sighs, stops fidgeting with a particular section and reaches for the lipgloss of Cassandra’s that looks good on her and uses it without asking. 

“Is that a problem?”

The way Cassandra mutters, “I hope not,” is annoying, and Allie wishes everyone could be as cool about this as she and Harry themselves are being. 

Harry’s waiting outside by his fancy car, and Allie feels kind of crazy for hesitating by the door before opening it. He just looks so fucking _good_ , okay? Even with his hair like this. God, she wants to tease him about it. It is 100% a hairstyle that his mom probably told him he had to wear to whatever fancy things they were dragged to. 

What she does instead is appreciate the way he looks her up and down when she steps outside, and then reach up and put her hands in his hair. 

“Hey!” 

“Stop,” she says firmly, holding him in place when he tries to move away. “Trust me.” 

He lets out a breath like he’s put off by this, but he’s watching her face as she messes it up a little and then manipulates the curls in a way that looks way more natural and _way_ better. At one point he lets out a quiet little sound and his eyes slip closed. Allie laughs a little. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. “It’s...feels good.”

Allie bites her lip, steps back and smiles at her handiwork. “So handsome.” He rolls his eyes at her, but she’s really not joking. “And I can file away this useless bit of information now. You like your hair played with.”

Harry Bingham blushing is a surprise and also a sight to behold. 

“You look great,” he tells her, reaches for her hand and holds her at arm’s length. She smiles at him. He jerks his head towards the car. 

She doesn’t ask him why they’re driving, even though she wants to. This town is literally dead and empty and it’s only a 15 minute walk. 

She doesn’t miss the way he looks at his reflection in the rearview as she’s tucking her legs into the car. 

“How much does Cassandra hate that I’m your date?”

Allie can’t help herself. “Almost as much as you love it.”

Harry laughs, reverses out of the driveway and steals a few more glances at her. 

“You really do look good.” She doesn’t need him to tell her that, but she appreciates the compliment anyway. “Almost beautiful.”

She looks out the window, not wanting him to get the satisfaction of hearing her laugh at that. God, what a stupid thing to say. She can tell he’s joking. Is there just a tiny part of her that’s hurt? Absolutely. But she’s never needed anyone to tell her she’s pretty and tonight is no different. 

Harry’s hand sits on her thigh, then, uninvited but not unwelcome. She glances over at him. 

“You are beautiful.”

She replies, “So are you,” and he just smiles gently at her and then looks back at the road. 

He doesn’t move his hand and Allie doesn’t mind. 

… … …

Prom is as lame as he thought it was going to be in the real world, or whatever. Honestly. The only bright spot is Allie. Which...feels appropriate. 

She wants to dance to all the songs he doesn’t. Which is, like, all of them because he sort of hates dancing. It’s Becca, actually, who pulls him by the hands out of his chair and onto the dance floor when an old Jay-Z song starts pumping through the hall. Allie’s just...a truly awful dancer. Her rhythm is MIA if, in fact, it is even at all existent. But she looks good when she’s having this much fun, and her dress swishes around her legs. At one point, Cassandra comes over and they’re all sort of dancing together in this stupid circle, the girls all shouting the lyrics to this Rihanna song.

Harry feels compelled to reach for Allie’s wrist when a slow rock song comes on. He says, “Dance with me,” and Allie’s face scrunches into a frown, but then she moves closer to him and slides her hands up onto his shoulders. 

“That just...I had a déjà vu,” she says, and Harry just watches her. He definitely didn’t. “But no headache.”

“I mean, we’ve definitely never danced together before.”

Allie bites her bottom lip, tugs at his lapel gently and then looks into his eyes. “Have you wanted to?”

The honest answer is no. He worries it’ll sound shitty, but he doesn’t want to lie. So he shakes his head. Allie smiles, like she appreciates his honesty, or something.

Will’s next to them, then, and Harry can’t help but show his annoyance. 

“We gotta do our thing,” he says, and Allie lets her head lower, her hair falling in her face. Harry just wants to know what’s going on. “C’mon!”

“No thanks,” she says, and then Will’s frowning and she flashes him a smile even Harry can tell is fake. “I don’t feel like it.”

Will walks off after giving Allie a look of disappointment, or something, and then Harry’s watching her. He can tell she’s all tense, because her fingers are pressing into his shoulders harder, and her toe bumps his shoe, and then she lets out this little breath and looks back up at him. 

“What’s your thing?” he asks, jealousy flaring for literally no good fucking reason. Aside from thinking Will was just rude as hell to interrupt a literal conversation and ignore Harry entirely, he’s got no reason to have feelings about this whatsoever. 

“It’s stupid.” He can’t say he’s surprised, really. He can also tell already that she’s not gonna actually fill him in on whatever the thing is. “I just...He wants to act like everything’s fine.” Harry knows the look on his face has got to be unattractive, but whatever. “We haven’t even talked about…” Allie looks at him, eyes moving quickly, and he doesn’t know what that’s about, but then she continues, so maybe she was just trying to decide if she was actually going to say anything. “I kissed him. The night of the play.”

 _Oh_. That makes so much sense, honestly. 

“You did?” he says, because he doesn’t want to sound _surprised_ , but he also doesn’t want her to think he’s jealous, or something stupid like that. He’s not. This is just a new fact about her, and he feels like he’s accumulating those every time they talk.

She nods. Then she clears her throat, which is a weirdly adorable sound, and lifts her hand off his shoulder so she can push at her hair. It’s an unnecessary gesture; her hair looks so good like this. 

“He made it super clear he’s not interested,” is what she says, and like, not to be a jerk about it, but Harry could’ve told her that. Literally on the back of how Will used to look at Kelly when they were dating. And the couple times he tried to talk to her about it, she laughed and shrugged it off and said he was being crazy. 

He wasn’t and he knew that and it never quite sat right with him that she wouldn’t even let him talk about how it made him feel, or whatever.

Harry can tell Allie’s like, genuinely bothered, or sad, or...He remembers from therapy that he shouldn’t try to guess peoples’ feelings when he could just ask them. 

“Sorry,” he says instead, and then asks, “Are you okay?”

Something flashes across her face, and he thinks he registers it as almost surprise, or...maybe even affection, or something, that he’s thought to ask. Her hand moves up, too, to the back of his neck, her fingertips just slipping into his hair. Given what she learned about him earlier, he thinks that’s a pretty loaded gesture. 

Allie nods her head. “Yeah. And everything’s different now, anyway.”

Shit. The way she says that...She’s looking right into his eyes, and her hand is there, feeling so good, and he _really_ thinks it would be so damn easy to kiss her. Wouldn’t it? They’re close together, and this slow song is on, and she’s saying something about things being different as though _they’re_ one of the things. 

But then this thought slams into him, that maybe she’s the best friend he’s ever had, and it leaves him feeling fucking pathetic and sad as hell. He clears his throat and breaks eye contact, looks down between them. It’s messed up, okay? Because it’s been like, a few weeks, or whatever, and yeah, they’ve obviously hung out alone and talked and stuff, but they still just barely know each other. Harry knows himself well enough to know that if they weren’t starting to be friends, if they didn’t know each other even this well, that he’d absolutely be trying to get her into his bed right now. Being friends with her feels more important than like one night of sex and then things being awkward, or something. 

“Hm.” Harry looks up at her when she makes the sound, and then her hand moves back to his shoulder and she’s smiling prettily. “You are a gentleman.”

He laughs, shakes his head, but says, “Told you.”

He’s a little surprised that her response is, “You wanna get out of here?” 

But also, he does, and he thinks, in passing, that he might just go anywhere or do anything with her. But then he feels like a sappy asshole and as he’s passing the bar on the way by, he grabs a bottle of gin. Not that he doesn’t have any at home, but whatever. Allie’d dropped his hand as soon as they were off the dance floor, and that’s fine. But also he liked how it felt to have her leading him that way. 

Harry doesn’t pay attention to whether or not anyone is watching them leave. It really feels like it doesn’t matter. 

When they get outside, he’s pulling his keys from his pocket, but Allie stops him, puts her hands on his arm and he gets the feeling she’s scared, so he glances at her and then to whatever it is she’s looking at. He sees Campbell and that kid...god, what’s his name? It’s something stupid that sounds like a cartoon. They’re in the shadows at the side of the building. Campbell’s saying something to him that - judging by body language alone - is mean or menacing, and the other guy is just standing there nodding. Then Campbell takes a small bag out of his pocket and the other kid grabs it, and then starts looking around. Everything about it is suspicious, even though Harry isn’t doubting at all what just happened. 

Harry has the presence of mind to pull Allie towards him and back around the corner where they’re out of sight. They hear footsteps, and Harry panics, knowing that the second someone comes around the side of the building, it’s going to seem like he and Allie were watching. She seems to realize the same thing. 

He watches her rub her thumb across her lips to smear her lip gloss, and knows _exactly_ what she’s trying for. Then she grabs his lapel and hisses at him to shut up when he smirks at her. He just puts one arm around her waist, the bottle of gin resting against her ass as he holds her. 

“I might say something filthy,” he warns, and she laughs all low and sexy, which...Shit. 

“I can handle it.”

Okay, _damn_. Her hand slides up his chest and then she’s rubbing her thumb with the gloss on it across _his_ lips, and goddammit she is so fucking smart. Like, how did she think of _that_ detail. If they wanna make it look like they’re making out…

The footsteps are super close now, so Harry puts his free hand up into her hair, messing it up like he’s honestly maybe wanted to do since he picked her up and she put her hands in his. 

“God, I can’t wait to get you home,” he says, and Allie’s breath hitches, and she moves closer to him still, her thigh against his. She does this thing with her eyes that is a little urgent and panicked and asking him for _more_. “You’re gonna look so fucking good in my bed.”

She says, “ _Harry_ ,” on this little laugh just as Campbell approaches. 

Allie ducks her head like she’s embarrassed at being caught, or something, like any of this is real. (It’s not _not_ real, but that’s not important right now, is it?) Harry doesn’t mind the way her face presses against his shoulder, and slides his hand up her back a little, protectively. 

“Well, well,” Campbell says, and Harry just juts his chin, trying to play his part here. “Classy, cous.”

Allie looks over, narrows her eyes at him. Harry doesn’t know what she’s about to say, but figures it’s not about to be particularly like, calm or gentle. He can feel how tense she is. Honestly, he’s a little pissed Campbell is always such an asshole to everyone. He’s feeling protective of her anyway, because...Maybe they’re making more of this than it is, but he thinks they’re both creeped out by what they just saw. 

Harry decides to speak before she can. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

Campbell reels back a little, crosses his arms and grins. “What’re you gonna do about it, Harry?”

He can’t fucking stand the way Campbell says it as if Harry’s spineless and scared, or something. Like, fuck that. So he moves, lets Allie go and stands in front of her, squares his shoulders to Campbell’s. Objectively, he knows Campbell would kick his ass in a fight - Harry doesn’t know anything about fighting and he’s getting the sense Campbell does. But all Campbell does is a similar thing to that day in the church with the gun. Once he realizes someone’s ready to stand up to him, he backs off, shakes his head. 

“Shame you’re leaving. I think things were about to get good inside,” Campbell says, then walks off. 

Allie’s leaning against the side of the building looking a little nervous, or whatever, but Harry turns to her and...yeah, it definitely looks like they were making out. He takes his chances and reaches up, uses his knuckle to wipe her lip gloss off her skin. She laughs a bit, does the same with him. 

“You okay?” he asks, and she nods. He doesn’t buy it. 

“I’m fine. That was...I’ve been dealing with his shit since we were kids.” Fuck. That’s intense. “And you weren’t as filthy as I thought you were going to be.” 

Harry laughs, sort of wants to take a swig of this alcohol, but he won’t do that and then drive.

“What do you think he meant by that?”

“I have no idea,” she says, but then laughs humourlessly and shakes her head. “If he was just giving Dewey what I think he was, and then...I’ve heard Dewey say some messed up things about girls before.” Harry pulls a face. _What_? “I just…”

“What?” he asks quietly. Allie finally meets his eyes again. He thinks he realizes now that the fear she was feeling wasn’t just at a possible confrontation with Campbell. It was Dewey and drugs and a history of being gross. 

“I have a really bad feeling about this.”

 _Oh_.

“Like another déjà vu?”

She shrugs. “Maybe?”

Harry takes a deep breath. This fucking place is forcing him to be a lot more brave than he ever wants to be. 

“Let’s stay,” he says, and then watches the relief flood her face. “Maybe we...I dunno. How could we get them to call it a night early and get everyone home?”

So he doesn’t know what would’ve happened if they’d actually left together when they were originally going to. Between him and Allie, he means. What happens instead is Kelly makes an embarrassing speech and Allie takes that opportunity to convince Cassandra to say the party is over and it’s time to get home. He drives Allie, Cassandra and Bean home, makes sure they’re safely locked inside before heading back for Sam, Becca and Grizz. 

Now he’s lying in his bed trying to get himself to sleep, but then his phone lights up on his bedside table. Allie’s texted him, _’You were a pretty good prom date, buddy.’_

Harry laughs a little, types out a reply, and sort of likes that this nickname might stick and now also go both ways.

… … …

Allie does not feel like getting out of bed is a thing she should have to do today. There are several things that are surprising to her, even now, about last night. She can’t stop thinking about Campbell and Dewey, and even though she, Harry and Cassandra were able to get everyone to go home, Allie still has a really bad feeling about that. She’s never seen those two people interact ever, and that she now knows they have is definitely cause for alarm and further investigation. 

She’s also thinking about how much _fun_ she had, and she knows exactly why. She actually likes hanging out with Harry. And that’s not the surprising part. God, she’s come to terms with it by now. It’s been easier to swallow than most things in this place, if she’s being really honest about it. He was a good date, and she thought he looked so good, and…

Okay, look, the thing that’s keeping her in bed, the thing that’s making her think _way_ too hard about the evening, is that she was absolutely, without a doubt, 100% prepared to sleep with Harry last night. 

God, that would’ve been so _stupid_. She’d _told him_ it wouldn’t happen, and he was absolutely a gentleman, even though she still thinks it’s at least halfway ridiculous that he’d used that word at all. But then he’d been _sweet_ , and thoughtful, and he’d said she’s beautiful. And she’s not that easy, okay? It takes more than that. Honestly, maybe it’s dumb, but the second she decided they should leave was the second he looked away instead of kissing her. It just made her want him. Like, a lot. 

And then, god, outside with her heart racing and him next to her, she legitimately thought of just kissing him to give them a cover, but lost her nerve, okay? Which is totally fine and they were _fine_ but then his stupid _voice_ when he was putting on a show for Campbell...Allie doesn’t know how much of that was real. She thinks it’s naive to assume none of it was. 

Thinking of sleeping with Harry, and then also not getting out of her bed, is a dangerous combination. 

Part of her wonders if, in the real world, they ever would’ve ended up in a situation like that. God. She has no reason to think they would, but also she’s got this weird feeling that everything with him is so natural and normal that there’s no way to imagine them not eventually ending up friends. Which is a fucked up thought, because prior to all this, all they had ever shared were barbs back and forth, or her calling him out on being a jerk to her sister.

Speaking of, the only reason she actually gets out of bed is that she hears her sister and Gordie legitimately _giggling_ in the next room through the wall they share. Allie groans quietly, gets up, showers, and then goes downstairs but no one else is home. Will’s at the cafeteria already, probably, and Allie has a day off in the work schedule. She wishes she’d made plans. The only thing she wants to do, really, is hang out with Harry. But again, that just seems like such a bad idea. Surely to god she can find a way to entertain herself for a day, right? 

She needs to stop thinking about anything like, romantic with Harry. This is the last place on Earth she can fathom having a goddamn relationship. If they even are on Earth. Which is a thing she’s not even sure of at this point. 

She parks herself outside on the steps with a book and her tea and reads until dinner time. She sits with Becca and Grizz in the caf, and then invites them over for a movie. Becca heads home but Grizz comes by and they watch Pulp Fiction, which Allie kind of hates and then they have a thoughtful discussion on why she thinks Tarantino is a hack. She likes making Grizz laugh. 

… … …

A week after prom, Harry learns two things in very quick succession. 

1 - Becca is pregnant. 

2 - He is one of now three people - including Becca - who knows she is pregnant. 

He sure as hell wasn’t seeking the information out, either. 

She and Sam are helping him and Grizz learn sign language, because Harry’s honestly sick of being able to only half communicate and also he thinks it’s like, basic fucking decency to at least _try_ , right? He thinks Grizz has alternative motivation, and he thinks he knows what that motivation is, but it is similarly very much not his business until Grizz makes it his business, which he’s under no obligation to do. 

And he’s picking up signing better than Grizz is. Which Grizz is annoyed and a little frustrated by, and Harry is like, absolutely pleased about. Mostly because he likes being the best at things and doesn’t know how to not be the slightest bit of an asshole about it. But in this instance, he just offers Grizz help practicing. It makes the house a bit quiet, honestly, because now the people who could just speak are also trying to use signs as much as possible, but Harry doesn’t hate it. It feels important. 

Anyway, he’s walking into Becca’s room, and the door’s open and everything. He and Grizz were arguing about the sign for sandals, which is stupid and pointless and Harry just wants to be right. He stops to tap on the door, but she’s standing there in a tight tank top and she has a legit _stomach_ and Harry turns away a bit, and then she like, bursts into tears, and _fuck_.

She pulls him in, hard, by the arm, and he pushes the door closed, and frankly, he’d like to be on the other side of it. Allie said something the other day when they were starting on doing inventory of the med supply at the hospital about birth control and Harry can’t say he expected anyone to have _shown up_ here pregnant. And he only has a basic understanding of timelines because he remembers his mom’s pregnancy, sort of, with his sister. He just doesn’t think you get to be Becca’s size in this timeframe and...Shit, he doesn’t even mean that in a rude way. 

“Do you want a hug, or something?” he asks, and she’s just sitting on the edge of her bed with her hands on the mattress, and she lets out this sad little laugh. But he was being serious, too. He likes Becca. They’re getting to know each other a lot better, living in the same house. She’s nice and she makes him laugh, too. 

“Do you want to give me one?”

Harry shrugs, shoots her a grin. “Yeah.”

She lets out this kind of sob, or whatever, and he sits down next to her, puts an arm around her. She leans against him, which he wasn’t expecting, but it’s fine. 

And then she says, “You can’t tell Allie.”

And the fact that that’s a thing she’s worried about - like the idea that he and Allie are so close that he’d, in her mind, _obviously_ tell Allie is…

But also: “I mean...She’s gonna find out,” he says gently. Becca doesn’t say anything, but pulls away and wipes her eyes. “I won’t tell her. But you should.”

“I don’t even know what to say,” she admits quietly, like she’s ashamed. And Harry thinks he gets that, but also doesn’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole. Because he’s not gonna pretend to understand what she’s going through, not really. 

“When in doubt, stick with the facts.” Becca laughs and looks at him like he’s being stupid, but he was being genuine and he thinks that’s the best way to go about all this. “Allie’s not gonna judge you.”

“It’s...more Cassandra I’m worried about.”

He grimaces. “Yeah.” Becca shoves him and he moves away a bit, gives her some space. “I mean, Cassandra’s a whole other thing.”

Becca moves, sits back against her pillows and pulls on her sweater, then drapes a blanket over herself. He thinks she’s trying to hide her stomach. But then, maybe she’s just not really comfortable with it, or something. He can’t blame her, maybe. 

“Isn’t it wild how different they are?” she asks, and he thinks now they're just gossiping, and he shouldn’t let her get away with changing the subject, but he also feels like she’s probably going to be talking about it with a bunch of people for a while from here on out. So maybe he should let her have this, you know? “I mean, look at you and Allie.”

There’s something about the way she says that that makes him narrow his eyes at her a little. “What do you mean?”

(He thinks he knows exactly what she means. He thinks she thinks there’s something going on that isn’t going on.)

She shrugs. “You’re close, now.”

“I…” 

But what the fuck can he even say to that? He and Allie _are_ kind of close, he supposes. They’re friends. They get along and make each other laugh and he feels _good_ when she’s around him. He likes helping her and likes that she wants to help him. He thinks she does, anyway. And yeah, he’s thought about kissing her. Thought about sleeping with her. Thought about doing _a lot_ of things with her. But that’s just hormones and loneliness, or whatever. That doesn’t mean…

Okay, if he’s being really real, he’s been thinking a lot about prom night. About the way she’d asked if he wanted to go, and the way she reacted when they were outside and he was saying those things. And he doesn’t know for sure what would’ve happened if they’d just left like they were about to, but he’s got some ideas. And it makes him think a bunch of things. And not just about sex. If they’re friends, he thinks they should just be friends. He just can’t make himself not want her, or whatever. And he can’t make her not want him, either. That’s where things get a little messy. 

Selfishly, he doesn’t _want_ her to stop wanting him. He likes a whole fucking lot that she does. He _thinks_ she does, anyway.

“We’re friends,” he says, and Becca just smiles at him.

“Allie’s a really good friend,” she adds gently, and he doesn’t know where this is going. “Just...She’s kind of the best, but she also doesn’t know how to like, not try to be everything to everyone all the time. And then she gets hurt.”

He doesn’t like how that sounds. He furrows his brow. “Is this some kind of warning?”

“No,” Becca says, as if he’s being an idiot. He hopes he is. He doesn’t like people trying to tell him what to do. He’s not doing anything wrong with Allie. “I think I’ve already learned that whatever reputation you had was kind of bullshit.”

Harry laughs out loud at this. Honestly, he’s kinda glad people are starting to see it. And he knows partly it’s because he’s been a little different in this place, too. But still. He likes the way people are with him now more than he did before.

“You should talk to her,” he says, then gets up, and Becca slides down in the bed and says something about having a nap first. 

When he goes back downstairs, Sam and Grizz are sitting close together on the sofa and Harry realizes he forgot to ask what the sign was they were arguing over. 

Grizz informs Harry he was wrong, is totally smug about it, and Harry just laughs and rolls his eyes, takes the ribbing and goes to make himself a cup of coffee. He and Allie are counting inventory again tonight; he’s gotta be alert and stuff.

… … …

When she says, “I’m scared,” and grabs his hand, she fucking means it, okay? 

They’re at the small clinic on Weston because the hospital is a huge project and she wants to make sure they secure everything they can rather than just finishing out the hospital first. Plus, Lawrence’s dad was a doctor here, and gave Allie the keys really easily when she asked him for them and told him why. He said to let her know if she needed help. When she told Harry this, she could’ve sworn she saw a flash of jealousy in his eyes, but that’s stupid. 

She’s regretting doing things this way now, because they’re in a back room and there’s only one way in and out of this place, and someone else has just entered. Harry’d stood quickly, looked at her and carefully peeked his head into the hall. 

Even if they close the door - which they know automatically locks - whoever’s there could just wait until they emerge. She’s fucking terrified, but she thinks they’re going to have to face this head on, aren’t they?

Harry tucks her behind him a little, though his hand is shaking as she holds it. 

They come face to face with Campbell, who’s grinning and holding a gun and looking at them with something that seems like glee in his eyes. 

“Why is it that I keep running into you two?”

Allie wants to punch him in the face. “Maybe because you followed us here.”

Harry says her name sharply, glances at her over his shoulder. 

Suddenly, doing this under cover of night seems like the stupidest idea they’ve ever had, and the stupidest thing the committee has approved to date. 

“You can’t hoard all of the medicine,” Campbell says instead of responding to her point. Which is annoying. But he’s the one with the gun, so she’s not going to push too hard. 

“If you need something, you can follow the process. We can’t just let people take what they want. That’s a recipe for fucking disaster,” Allie says, and then she’s moving from behind Harry because she doesn’t _need_ protection, okay? 

“Sounds fun, though,” he says, and then meaningfully turns to Harry, asks, “Doesn’t it?” in a way that makes Allie think there’s some kind of history there. 

She doesn’t have time to try and unpack that right now.

“If you just wanna get high, I’m not gonna let you take anything,” she argues. 

Campbell holds up the gun, just showing her again that he has it, just in case she’d forgotten, or something. 

“I don't have to wait for you to let me.”

Harry moves then, quickly, and he’s _angry_ , Allie realizes. He shoves at Campbell’s chest, says, “Are you gonna fuckin’ shoot us? Over some oxy? You’re not that stupid, and neither are we. Get the fuck out.”

Campbell’s sick grin is back again, and Allie’s holding her breath. God, if something happens to Harry…

“It’s cute,” Campbell says, but takes a step backwards. “The way you two protect each other. As if I’d fucking hesitate to pull the trigger if I wanted to.”

He walks out, and Harry goes to lock the front door behind him, but Allie’s thinking that’s messed up, too, because they’d locked it behind them on the way in. Harry turns around, jumps when he sees her standing there. Yeah, her nerves are fried, too. 

“He has a key,” she tells him, and he seems to realize it, too. 

He breezes past her, his shoulder brushing hers, and heads back to the supply room. He starts throwing all the strongest shit into her backpack, and she looks at him like he’s lost it, because this wasn’t the plan. The plan was to do inventory and _then_ figure out a storage system and keep everything centrally, probably in the hospital. They shouldn’t be moving things now. Then again, they made that plan when they thought only they had access. 

“Harry.”

“I’m getting really fucking sick of seeing you with a gun in your face,” he says darkly, frozen in place, bag in his hand by his side. She feels like she could cry. “Why do you antagonize him like that? How can you be scared, and then like, run into the burning building?”

He’s so _angry_ , and Allie feels awful for it. She’s partly to blame for his emotions here. He was scared - they were both scared - and _of course_ they were. And not to be an asshole about it, but she’s not surprised that Harry’s reaction to fear is to make himself small and try to wait til it’s over. That’s just not her style. And yeah, he stepped up at the end, and he did the same thing on prom night. God, he did the same thing at that meeting, too, didn’t he? Maybe not to the same degree, but she knows he moved closer to her and Cassandra and was trying to be protective, or something. 

She’s just not going to let bad people do bad shit and get away with it. If that means she’s reckless, then so be it. 

But still. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and genuinely means it. Harry throws a few sample packs of some opiate or another into the bag and then leans his hand on the shelf and lets his head fall. 

“He deals. You know that, right?” She didn’t before prom night, but she’s put the pieces together now on how he’s managing his supply. “And now he’s gonna know we’re the ones who moved everything.”

Okay, that’s kind of a terrifying reality, also.

“Do you think we should just leave it? Like, is that what you’re saying right now?”

He sighs. Actually, what she thinks he’s doing is taking these big breaths to steady himself or calm down, or something.

“We obviously can’t leave it,” he tells her, and okay, maybe she agrees, despite her earlier knee jerk reaction to his deviating from the plan. “I’m sorry I got pissed.”

She doesn’t want to say it’s okay, because it doesn’t feel okay. She doesn’t like being yelled at. It reminds her of the way her uncle used to yell at them when they were kids. God, that family is so fucked up. She’s glad Sam’s away from them. She hates that it took this for it to happen. 

“I’m sorry I was reckless. I just...don’t wanna go down without a fight.”

“Jesus Christ, Allie,” he breathes out, then shakes his head. She thinks there’s more he wants to say. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t go down at all.”

She presses her lips together tight to suppress her giggle, and then his cheeks turn pink when he realizes what he’s said, but he doesn’t stop moving. He reaches for the laptops they’ve been using, shoves them in his own bag and passes her the backpack. 

“Stop,” he says, voice low, and like, _no_.

She places her hand on his chest to stop him walking past her. He just cuts her a look from the corner of his eye. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. 

He takes another one of those breaths, nods, and says something about how they should hang out a while to make sure Campbell hasn’t stuck around and waited for them outside. The thought alone makes her stomach cramp.

They find a water cooler in one of the back exam rooms, and Harry pours each of them one of those little paper cones full. She’s half tempted to throw it at him just to see what he’d do. Maybe if they hadn’t just gone through what they did, she would. It seems really shitty to even consider it now. 

Harry sits down on one of those rolling stools doctors use, and Allie gets up onto the table, the paper crunching beneath her weight. She swings her legs a bit and remembers coming here as a kid, when her old family doctor worked out of this clinic. She remembers the woman giving her vaccinations, and checking her over when Allie had strep throat. She remembers having blood drawn and a bunch of tests ordered after Cassandra got sick. Having to have this genetic thing ruled out for her, too, even though they knew how rare it was. Allie’d been the lucky one. 

“What’re you thinking about?” he asks, then rolls over to refill his cup. 

“You know I’ve never broken a bone?” she says, and he looks confused for a moment, but it passes. 

“Me neither.”

She smiles. It’s stupid to like that they have that in common. 

“I feel so...Cassandra’s heart, and Sam’s hearing, and Campbell’s mental health…” Harry’s watching her carefully. She hasn’t made an actual point, and she thinks he’s waiting on it. “And then me. I think the worst thing I’ve ever come down with is bronchitis, when I was a baby.”

He smiles gently. “Lucky you.”

She laughs. It’s not funny. “But then...I have a gun in my face twice, and I don’t know how to run away from things that will probably hurt me.” She pauses. Harry wheels over to her. His fingers reach for her ankle, his skin sliding over hers. Her heart races. “Maybe there’s a connection.”

He pauses a long time, rubbing circles over her ankle with the tips of his fingers. He’s not looking at her face, and she wonders if he’s holding something back, or if he thinks she’s kind of full of shit, or...She wants to know what he’s thinking. 

“I bought pills from him a couple times,” he admits quietly, like he doesn’t really want to be saying it out loud. Allie doesn’t know how to respond to him, either. “Before we got here. I was...after my dad died…”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says, and then realizes the way they’re sitting. Her knees are slightly parted and she’s higher up than him and he’s right in front of her on this stool and…

The fact that she can even register how hot he is even under these circumstances, after what just happened and during this conversation, is another thing that scares the shit out of her. 

“It was just a lot,” he says, and she hopes he didn’t take her saying that to mean she didn’t want to hear. She’s ready to listen to anything he wants to share. Has been for a while. “My mom’s not, like, the warmest person?” Allie nods, though she has no real frame of reference or way to confirm it. She’ll take his word. “It was a fucked up time.”

She doesn’t mean to laugh again. She’s not laughing at him saying what he’s said, it’s just… Harry just smiles up at her, closes his hand around her ankle and tugs himself closer to her. 

“And all this isn’t fucked up at all,” she says, and he lets out a laugh that makes her want to kiss him. 

This is becoming a problem. 

“You know, you were the only person other than Kelly who talked to me my first day back at school after he died?”

Allie freezes. “What?”

He shrugs, and maybe he’s going to try to make it sound like it’s not a big deal, but she can tell it is. It feels like it is. He wouldn't have said anything if it wasn’t. 

“In the science hallway.” She remembers. “You said hi and asked how I was.” Allie nods, and Harry lets go of her ankle, stands and her knees brush against him. He’s not looking at her. “I dunno. I just...I appreciated it.”

She wants to reach for him, to pull him closer and tell him that she _cares_ about him, because she thinks he's having a hard time getting that. 

“You know, I felt invisible my whole life until we got here.”

It’s a stupid thing to have said. She doesn’t mean it. She does mean it. It’s too heavy and it confirms all the stupid things people always used to say behind her back. 

“We’re in the same boat,” he says quietly, and Allie’s head pounds hard enough that she holds it in her hands and leans forward. Harry’s whispering, “Fuck,” and then moving closer, and as the headache ebbs away, she looks up and god, it would be so easy to kiss him right now. So easy and so fucked up. “We should go.”

Allie nods. She’s still scared of what might happen when they get outside. But then Harry holds her hand and they run to his car, and he tells her they have to stop at the hospital and drop this stuff off. She doesn’t really want to, but she knows he’s right, too. 

They drop everything in the emergency room medicine closet, and know that nothing has been taken, because they did a little tape trick on the door and the seal wasn’t broken. That had been Harry’s idea, and it was a good one. They do the same thing again before they leave, and Allie just really wants to stop wandering around in the dark, okay? 

As he’s pulling out of the parking lot, she asks, “Can I stay with you tonight?” and he’s nodding before she’s even finished the question.

… … …

The one thing he thinks he and Cassandra agree on is that Allie needs to stop putting herself in front of Campbell when he’s acting fucking insane. 

The committee is talking about what to do about him, because Sam’s just dropped a fucking bomb on them, though Harry’s not surprised in the slightest. Especially not after what Allie said the other night. But he can tell even she didn’t know it was this bad. 

This all leads to a debate about guns versus no guns, and Harry’s shocked as fuck that one of the holdouts is Helena. Although her dad always did have that closet conservative energy about him, even if he’d tried to act like he was as progressive as most of the other parents in town. And it wasn’t even the religion thing. Harry remembers being dragged to a couple town meetings with his mom when he was younger and the nanny wasn’t available, and Mr. Wu going up against like, funding the arts in the schools and shit. 

Allie leaves the meeting first, stalking out like she’s truly pissed, her hair swaying behind her, which is interesting. It’s a wild contrast, her soft yellow hair moving like that when the rest of her is so jerky and pissed. Harry thinks it’s nice. Hot. Fuck. 

Cassandra meets his eyes and he doesn’t know what the fuck she’s trying to communicate, but he goes after Allie anyway, because he doesn’t actually care about Cassandra’s thoughts right now. He finds Allie outside the church, around the side, crying. 

“Allie.”

She turns away from him, wipes her eyes. It’s stupid. It’s not like he hasn’t seen her crying before. 

“I’m fine.”

And like, she woke up in his bed three mornings ago, her hand on his shoulder and her thigh pressed all up against his. He thinks they’re close enough friends now that she shouldn’t feel like she has to hide from him.

“Let’s go somewhere and talk,” he says gently, setting his hand on her elbow. She doesn’t pull away, but she does give him a look that makes him want to stop touching her. Like, he thinks she’d like him to stop. 

“I don’t wanna go somewhere and talk. I wanna never have a gun pulled on me again.”

Honestly, fair. 

“You’re pissed at her,” he says, and then just starts walking, and she starts walking next to him like he was hoping she would. She pushes her backpack up onto her shoulder. They’ve gotta go do more inventory tomorrow, but they’re planning to go at 9am. He gets the sense that won’t stop Campbell the fucking sociopath from showing up, but…

“It’s just fucking selfish,” she says, and Harry agrees, and he imagines it was hard for Allie to sit there in that meeting and not be able to participate in the conversation. Not that they tell her not to, but she’s not a member of the committee and she tries hard not to get into things. 

And he knows some of the things Cassandra says are directly from Allie, because she talks to him, too. And he knows how fucking smart she is, and how her head works for this stuff. He thinks it’s bullshit that Cassandra left her off the committee, now that he knows Allie better, too. He understands why she was pissed. What he said when they first got here was true; she is better than Cassandra at some things. He thinks it’s her influence on him, and Cassandra, and a lot of the other members of the committee he knows she has conversations with, that have things working even as well as they are.

“You could be selfish,” he says, because honestly? He’s thinking this girl could stand to do something _she_ wants to do for once. She gives him a look. “I’m serious! What do you want?”

Allie bites her bottom lip, which looks hot, and looks down towards the ground and then tucks her hair behind her ear, which looks hot. Then she smiles a little. Which also looks hot. 

“I can’t tell you.”

 _Hot_.

“If you can’t tell me, who can you tell?” he asks. 

They’re fully walking towards his house. He doesn’t mind. 

“Literally anyone else,” she laughs. 

Yeah, that’s...He has a few things in mind, and if it’s anything like that, he’s definitely down to learn more. 

He doesn’t push the issue any further until they’re at his house, in his room. Because shit, if she wants to...He’s just not gonna say no. He’s past trying to convince himself he doesn’t want her. He does. He thinks he likes her more now than he ever liked Kelly, which is fucking terrifying, because he told Kelly he loved her. He’ll be honest and say he didn’t know if he meant it. And that doesn’t mean he loves Allie, or anything, but he can confirm what he felt for Kelly wasn’t love. He doesn’t think she loved him, either. He thinks they were just nice to each other and liked how it felt to have someone. 

It’s definitely different with Allie. In a lot of ways he doesn’t feel like listing. 

She lies back on his bed with her feet on the floor, and Harry stands there and crosses his arms. 

“Okay, spill.”

She laughs and shakes her head, sits up. “I knew you weren’t gonna drop it that easily.” He just grins. This is like, the stupidest flirtation he’s ever had with anyone, including her. “Let’s open your pool.”

He makes sure to keep his face neutral and not let on he’s disappointed she wasn’t talking about sex. 

Also, does she think he has the slightest fucking clue of how to open a pool and balance the chemicals or whatever? Because if she thinks his parents didn’t just pay for someone to come once a week to do that…And it’s been completely neglected since they got here.

“You wanna go swimming?”

“It’s _hot_ ,” she says, and then gives him this little _look_ and he’s pretty sure it’d make him do whatever she wanted. “I’ll help clean it. I’m sure Grizz would, too!” 

Okay, she’s like, genuinely excited and happy and that is absolutely the reason he agrees to it. The thought of her in a bikini doesn’t hurt but ultimately comes after he’s already nodded his head and reached for her hand so they can go to the garage and get whatever they need. 

… … …

They spend a lot more time at his house than they do at hers. Which makes a lot of sense, really, since her house has Cassandra and Will, and in general less square footage, so there’s no way to like, get away from anyone. But right now, Cassandra and Will are both on work shifts, and Bean and Gordie are at the school, and so Allie had texted Harry and asked, _’Come over and hang out?’_ and he’d replied, _’Gimme a half hour, buddy’ _, and she’d rolled her eyes, but smiled, and thrown her phone on her bed.__

__Harry wandering into her room and leaning back on her bed like he’s been here enough times before to be so comfortable is...very much making her feel things. Mostly inappropriate things. Mostly about how easy it might be to join him. To kiss him. They’re here alone, and she wants him. God, does she ever not want him these days?_ _

__“So…” he draws out, and raises a brow like maybe he can read her mind. “Any plans, or you just want me to get comfy right here?”_ _

__That might embarrass her (she really does think he might know what she’s thinking) but something about him saying the word comfy makes her laugh._ _

__“Any other suggestions?”_ _

__Yeah, she’s definitely playing his game, isn’t she? If he wants to push things, to call her on zoning out a bit at the sight of him on her bed, she can push back. At this point, if he even just dared her to go for it, she absolutely would. She almost wishes he would. It might be easier._ _

__Instead of answering, he grins and looks over at her wall, at the perfectly curated cluster of photos she has tacked up there. He gets up, walks over for a better look. She watches him. He lets out a little laugh, glances over his shoulder at her, but she doesn’t know which one he finds funny._ _

__“I remember when we were kids,” he says, and she just waits, assuming there’s more he’s about to say. Because like, yeah she remembers childhood also. “And you’d carry around that little camera.” She laughs and nods, walks closer. Most of these pictures were taken on a newer version of the same thing. “You asked me if you could take my picture.”_ _

__She’s only slightly embarrassed. He’s not special in that; she took a lot of pictures. There are a couple shoeboxes full of them in her closet somewhere._ _

__But god, it’s not like they were close when they were little. She knew who he was because it’s a small town and they’ve all gone to the same schools since they started. Harry was older, and Cassandra complained about him, and he didn’t stay with her group of friends or Allie’s. He was honestly always a little off on his own. She remembers him on the swings when they were little, never going high enough, in her opinion, for it to get really fun. Then, soon after, she remembers him always sitting under that one tree on the school yard. The tree over by the sandbox. He’d always have a book or a magazine or a snack the other kids would talk about like it was special._ _

__Allie remembers thinking he looked lonely._ _

__But she also remembers getting into trouble for taking peoples’ pictures without their consent._ _

__“My mom told me it was rude not to.”_ _

__He laughs softly, turns to her. He looks like he’s holding something back. “It was like, super hot out and you wanted to hold hands.”_ _

__Oh fuck. _What_?_ _

__“That’s...I don’t remember that. Doesn't sound like me.”_ _

__Harry smiles gently. That’s the moment she realizes he’s got to be telling the truth. Because she thinks he’s been carrying this memory around since then and he wouldn’t be sharing it with her for no reason if it wasn’t true. She’s finding it really hard not to think it means something that he’s held onto it this long, too._ _

__“You said you wanted a picture with the grass in the background.” Allie plays with her ear, avoids his eyes. “You took the picture, told me I had sweaty hands, and ran away.”_ _

__“No, I didn’t.”_ _

__He grins, looks just a touch surprised that this is her reaction. “Hand to god.”_ _

__She has a headache. Harry meets her eyes, rubs his temple, but he’s still smiling._ _

__Her jaw drops. “No. I did not do that.” He chuckles a little, looks away. Allie’s head hurts, but not so much that she can’t also still recognize that he’s sort of beautiful. As if that’s been a thing she’s forgotten even once since, probably, the day he’s talking about._ _

__(Which, despite her protests, she’s starting to actually remember. He’d been wearing a tee shirt with little sailboats on it. She thinks it’s a little fucked up that she can recall that detail.)_ _

__“How old was I?” she asks, and the way he looks at her, she thinks he knows she remembers._ _

__Harry crosses his arms, leans his hip against her desk. He’s really close. She could reach out so easily and touch him. His eyes narrow. She wonders if that’s the headache._ _

__“I dunno,” he says quietly. “Like, eight, or something.”_ _

__“Okay, well.” She stops, looks up at him, a little grin on her face, and he’s just watching, looking at her, like he’s finding this endearing. “I can’t take responsibility for anything I did when I was eight.”_ _

__He lets out a hum. He’s watching her lips. She thinks she should kiss him. She wonders if he’d like it. No, no. She wonders if he’d think it’s as good an idea as she does._ _

__Really, _really_ , she’s wondering why it’s been so long since he last tried to kiss her. She wonders if the headache would get worse if they did it. _ _

__“Anyway, I kept napkins in my pockets for the rest of the summer,” he tells her, grinning. She lets out a laugh that’s way too loud for how close they’re standing, but she can’t help herself; she wasn’t expecting that. “Our housekeeper got so mad when they kept going through the dryer.”_ _

__Allie smiles at him, then moves away, feeling just way too near to him, wanting some distance. She doesn’t want to have to think too hard about how different things might’ve been if she’d spent more time with him under that tree. Maybe he would’ve started calling her buddy years ago._ _

__It’s a stupid thought._ _

__“Sorry I gave you a complex about your weird, sweaty hands.”_ _

__He gives her a hurt look, then walks over, stands in front of where she’s sitting on her bed. Then he reaches down, takes one hand, then the other. She doesn't know what the hell he’s doing. What is this?_ _

__“I don’t think you think my hands are weird now,” he says, and he’s not looking at her face. No, he’s looking down at their hands, his thumb moving slowly across her skin, moving up and down, weaving between her knuckles. It’s weirdly sexy. God, she needs to stop thinking of him this way._ _

__That, or just act on it._ _

__She can almost imagine a world in which she’s confident enough to just tug his hands, to lie back on her bed like some kind of invitation._ _

__“I don’t have any strongly-held opinions about your hands now, no,” she says._ _

__Something dark and intriguing crosses his face, and then his lips twitch and he squeezes her left hand in his right one and then lets go._ _

__She asks if he wants to look through her pictures and see if they can find it. He looks a little too happy when he says yes. They sit on her bed with the shoeboxes next to them, flipping through things. He asks her who people are that he doesn’t know. She tells him the stories behind pictures of her, Cassandra, Sam, Becca…_ _

__They find the picture of them holding hands. It’s just their hands and the grass and the only reason she knows it’s him is because he just told the story._ _

__He gets this intense look on his face, then pulls it closer to his eyes to study. She’s just watching him, and then he turns it to face her, leans in close again, and points._ _

__“Four leaf clover,” he says, and Allie’s heart beats away in her chest like maybe this all means something._ _

__… … ..._ _

__He wakes up from a nightmare, which hasn’t happened in a while. He realizes, pointedly, that it hasn’t happened since he stopped drinking and using substances as much as he used to. He feels good about that, even if the nightmare was fucking terrifying and he sort of hopes it’s a one off._ _

__(He knows well enough that it’s probably not. He knows it’s probably the first of many.)_ _

__But yeah, the image of himself and Allie in an empty hospital with his dead dad and her dead sister who actually isn’t dead following them around is just… He woke up with a gasp when his dad grabbed Allie’s arm. Fuck._ _

__He can’t get back to sleep._ _

__It’s 3:00am, and he pulls a tee shirt on and heads downstairs. There’s a light on, he notices, and then he finds Becca at the kitchen island with a cup of tea and a pregnancy book open in front of her. She must’ve heard him coming down the stairs, and she smiles at him sleepily when he fills a glass with water and then leans his elbows on the counter across from her._ _

__“Can’t sleep?” he asks before she can question what’s got him up in the middle of the night._ _

__She shakes her head. “I’m perpetually uncomfortable.”_ _

__Shit. He gives her a sympathetic look. “You need more pillows, or something? There’re extras in the linen closet.”_ _

__Becca smiles at him like he’s being sweet, or something. Look, he doesn’t know a lot about gestating babies, and shit, but he’s assuming it’s bad if you’re not sleeping. Like, she’s gotta be tired, right?_ _

__“What are you doing up?” she asks, instead of really responding. Whatever; his house is her house at this point. If she wants something, she can help herself._ _

__“Bad dream,” he mumbles. She looks sympathetic. “I don’t really wanna talk about it.”_ _

__Becca gives him a little smile like she understands, though he isn’t going to ask how. Then she puts her hand flat on her book, fingers splayed, and asks, “Want to hear all the incredibly fucked up things that are going to happen to me in the next few months?”_ _

__He doesn’t mean to laugh. It’s not nice to laugh. But he moves around the island and sits down next to her. Her tea’s gone cold; he wonders how long she’s been up._ _

__They spend the next half hour looking through these pages, pointing out things and trying to grasp any of it, because like...Shit. They’re old enough to make babies, but are they _really_? This stuff is intense. It’s...for people in better situations than the one they’re in. Harry’s looking at Becca and he can tell she notices, but she’s not acknowledging it. _ _

__“Are you…” Shit. How can he ask what he wants to ask without sounding like an asshole. “Are you cool with all this?”_ _

__She lets out this heavy breath, like she wasn’t expecting it, or, maybe, like she’s been waiting for _someone_ to actually say it. He notices the way she composes herself, thinks maybe he’s made her cry, which he feels like an asshole about. But he just really can’t imagine anyone wanting _this_. To have a baby in high school when you’re not really in high school because you’re trapped in whatever the fuck this is. _ _

__“No,” she breathes out, and then sounds so fucking _sad_ , and looks at him, and she starts crying. Harry puts his hand on her back and moves his thumb back and forth. “But fuck me, I guess.”_ _

__And honestly, that’s got to be how she feels. Like there’s no way out of it, and the consequences to whatever happened that led to her being pregnant in the first place are the most extreme they could be just because they’re here._ _

__Harry wants to tell her it'll be okay, but he also doesn’t want to lie and can’t promise it’s the truth._ _

__He thinks back to yesterday when he was in Allie’s room and looking at all her pictures. Becca was in so many of them, a constant in Allie’s life. He’s jealous. Of both of them. Of them individually, and then of their friendship._ _

__“Allie showed me pictures of you as a kid,” he says, and yeah, he could explain it better, and Becca definitely looks amused, or something, that he’s not. But it’s also just kind of normal for most people at this point that he and Allie do the things they do, interact the way they do, share the way they do._ _

__“Did she?”_ _

__“Yeah.” He smiles and Becca’s waiting for more. “You were cute.” She laughs, rolls her eyes, then wipes her face with her thumbs. And, because he thinks this is where he was going with this from the start: “Your kid’s gonna be great.”_ _

__Becca leans over so her head is against him, turns the page and says, “Thanks, Harry.” She pauses, lets out a breath. “I’m worried about being a mom.”_ _

__Shit. Yeah. He can’t even imagine. Like, the baby is one thing. Raising it is another._ _

__“I saw this thing once,” he says, and Becca pulls away again, looks at him. “It said, like, I wanna raise a kid that’s well adjusted just to flex on my parents.”_ _

__She laughs, loud and bright, then covers her mouth and gives him a look like it’s his fault if they’ve woken up Sam or Grizz._ _

__“Did you ever think about having kids?” she asks, and like, maybe it’s a valid question. Shit, he and Kelly talked about marriage at one point. Not that they would do it any time soon or within even a few years, but just like. What if they got married? What if they stayed together? What would their lives be like?_ _

__But he answers honestly, which means he says, “Fuck no. I’m 18.”_ _

__Becca laughs. Then looks away from him and almost whispers, “I think you’re a good person,” as if she might be saying, in a different way, that maybe _maybe_ someday he’d be a good parent, or something. _ _

__This, after the fucked up dream he had about his dad, is sort of sending him spinning._ _

__But he says, “Thanks, Becca,” because she sounded sincere about it and he genuinely likes that she doesn’t see him as some jerk who thinks he’s better than everyone. That lots of people are starting to think of him in a better light._ _

__Then she switches things up completely, asks, “Can we talk about your obvious thing for Allie?”_ _

__Harry mumbles, “No,” because he doesn’t know what else to say, and Becca’s somehow grinning at him as she takes an obnoxiously loud sip of her cold tea._ _

__“You didn’t deny it.”_ _

__He thinks about how he wants to play this. He could definitely talk his way out of it, make up some shit about how his ‘no’ was him saying he doesn’t have a thing for Allie and that’s why he’s not talking about it. But also he thinks Becca’s starting to know him well enough to… No, you know what? Probably everyone around can tell there’s something more than friendship going on. Or rather, that he’d be okay if there was. God, yesterday in her room, he really, really almost just pushed Allie back onto her bed when she was sitting there and he had her hands. Because it would’ve been so fucking easy, right? And he could absolutely tell by the look on her face that she wouldn’t have stopped him. He’s been thinking about it since, going back and forth on thinking he should've or being glad he didn’t._ _

__But weirdly - or maybe not, who fucking knows - the closer he gets with people like Becca and Grizz and Sam, the less he feels the need to so fiercely protect or draw this line between his friendship with Allie, and anything else with her. Not that he wants to fuck up their relationship; he doesn’t. But she’s not the only person here who he can consider a friend. So maybe it feels like less of a risk._ _

__Or maybe, really, he just can’t actually convince himself anymore that he doesn’t want it as bad as he does._ _

__“No, I didn’t deny it,” he says, knowing damn well that gives him away, but not caring._ _

__… … ..._ _

__The first day his pool is swimmable, they don’t even make it into the water._ _

__She refuses to be embarrassed._ _

__No one else is awake. Allie’d insisted their first swim be at nighttime, because it’s her favourite, and she knows a few people went in earlier, in the heat of the sun, but despite her insistence at him opening it, and that she wanted to swim because it was hot…_ _

__She gets distracted._ _

__She changes in his bathroom, because she was rushing to get out of the house because Will was trying to talk to her and she just did not want to deal with him. He’s been really irritating her lately, and she wanted to get out of the house as quickly as possible, so she just grabbed her bikini - the navy and white striped one she got last summer - and told Cassandra she might not be home._ _

__She steps out of Harry’s bathroom with her suit on, her hair down her back, and he’s there and shirtless and _staring_ , and she feels a little flush and a _lot_ of want. _ _

__And then he tilts his head just, _just_ a little, and does this thing with his lips that might legitimately make her moan. She’s not sure. She’s not paying any attention to herself, just him. Then he takes this breath that she’s a little obsessed with, and she thinks she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t just fucking kiss him already. _ _

__She walks over, puts her hands on his waist, and he’s looking down at her like he wants to smile but isn’t sure if he should, and she just goes for it, leans up and kisses him. He responds immediately, thank god, and then brings his hands up onto her face, and he’s so gentle with her she might not be able to stand it. She’s the one who opens her mouth, presses her tongue against his lips, and he lets out this breath she kind of falls for, then he’s moving one hand into her hair and the other down to her bare skin at her waist, and she really, really wants to be closer to him._ _

__She’s _never_ wanted someone like this before. _ _

__She pulls back a bit, because he seems really into this, too, but god, the last person she had feelings for and wanted to kiss sort of…_ _

__Harry’s just looking down at her, then he smiles a little, and she smiles back and his thumb grazes the skin just behind her ear. His grin turns sort of filthy when she lets out a soft sound at just the touch._ _

__“Allie.” She lets her eyes slip closed, and then his hand moves lower, down onto her hip, over the fabric of her bottoms. “God, you’re...so sexy.”_ _

__No guy has ever called her that before. She looks up at him again, then moves her arms, puts them over his shoulders to draw herself closer. He takes a bit of a ragged breath, and she feels really, really good knowing she can make him a little unglued, too. He kisses her slowly, which might make her go crazy, and they’re still just standing, even if his hands are moving a bit more, touching more of her, and she doesn’t really know what to do with herself. Look, she’s like, fooled around with people before, but this feels much, much more intense than that. Mostly because she knows she wants to be in his bed, under him, and that’s not an urge she’s felt with someone else. She just feels _ready_ , and that’s about her, yeah, but it’s about him, too. About trusting him, and liking him, and liking who she is when she’s around him. How he makes her feel. _ _

__She slips the tips of her fingers beneath the band of his shorts at the back of his hip, and he makes a noise and presses his forehead against hers. Allie searches his eyes when he opens them, and she wants to make sure they both want this. God, she can tell they both _want it_ , but are they actually going to go through with it? _ _

__He says, “We can stop,” but sounds like he doesn’t really want to._ _

__Allie smiles at him because she can _tell_ , and then says, “I don’t want to stop.”_ _

__Harry gives her this little smile that...It feels familiar, maybe, even though she thinks she’s never actually seen it before, and kisses her once, gently, quickly, and then turns them, moves them towards his bed. She’s still touching his skin, doesn’t want to stop doing that, and then, when he’s leaning over her, she thinks he’s teasing when he doesn’t come close enough._ _

__“Harry,” she breathes out, hand on the back of his neck, trying to pull him closer. She parts her legs and he moves, and _finally_ , presses against her. It feels so good she sucks in a breath. _ _

__They don’t kiss much longer before Harry’s hand moves between her legs, and everything feels so amazing, but so not enough, and then when he’s sliding her bottoms down off her hips, she looks at him and he’s just watching her like he’s...She has no idea what he’s thinking, but the look on his face is hot, and she thinks it’s really kind of adorable that his hand is shaking a little when he moves it again. Like, she can assume he’s more experienced than her, but he’s still a little nervous, and it makes her feel like it evens them out a bit._ _

__Before he touches her again, his hand stills, and he’s leaning on his elbow, and god, what is he _doing_?_ _

__“Hey, um.” She hopes she doesn’t look annoyed or anything else awful. She moves again, slides her hand up into his hair and loves the way it makes him close his eyes. “I’m not...I’ve only...”_ _

__Allie presses her lips together. Is he trying to say what she thinks he is?_ _

__“What?” she asks, and hopes it sounds encouraging and not like she’s surprised._ _

__“Nothing.” He leans in to kiss her again, but she puts her hand on his chest and says his name. Like, god, she’s lying here mostly undressed. He can say some fucking words. He hesitates. “I haven’t had like, a crazy amount of sex.”_ _

__For some reason, Allie feels herself flushing at him actually naming where this is going. “Okay.”_ _

__“I just don’t want you to think I’m like, some lothario.” She’s really trying not to laugh. He turns pink and looks embarrassed, which she hates. She leans up so she can kiss him, and god she likes just doing that. Just being able to whenever she wants. “I’m serious.”_ _

__“Yeah, I’m...I’m not going to be disappointed, or something,” she almost whispers. He seems to be waiting for her to say something. It’s like he doesn’t believe her. “I haven’t had any, so.”_ _

__He nods like he’d assumed that. She hates it a little? Like, could he tell, somehow?_ _

__He looks down her body, and his hand moves from her neck, down over her chest, his fingertips dragging down her stomach, which makes her breathing quicken._ _

__“And you want to with me?”_ _

__Like, has she said or done anything to indicate she might not be sure? She nods her head and god, could he please fucking _touch her_ now? _ _

__She kind of wants to make a joke, but she thinks he’s genuinely asking, and she thinks consent is mandatory, so she presses her thighs together, which may be confusing, or something, and says, “Yes,” in a voice she thinks might get her what she wants._ _

__It gets her a ridiculously gorgeous smile, and it gets her his hand moving up her thigh, and it gets her a kiss that has her parting her legs again. So. _Yes_. _ _

__She says it again when he asks her if this is okay, and again when he asks her if it feels good. And then again when she reaches down and shows him where she wants him to touch her, and then again when she’s so _close_. It’s his name she says when she’s letting go. And then he’s kissing her again, and she pulls him between her legs and pushes at his shorts and she’s still breathing hard. _ _

__After, when it’s over, she feels a little sweaty and a little breathless and so is he. And she also thinks she could come again - wants to - but isn’t sure if she should say so._ _

__She feels good. Harry’s playing with her hair a little, and she wants to laugh because her stupid bikini top is still on. Maybe she just feels giddy, or something._ _

__She says, “That was it?” as a joke, and she’s laughing when the headache hits. Harry joins her, presses his forehead to her temple and breathes into her ear. It reminds her of just minutes ago, makes her ache a little. She squeezes her thighs together, which does not help._ _

__“Fuck,” he breathes, and then turns on his side so he’s looking at her, and he’s still touching her hair, but then his hand is on her stomach, too, and she thinks _please_. “We need to figure this out.”_ _

__Yeah, that’s...not at all a thing she can focus on when she feels like she’s wound so tightly she might break._ _

__When she doesn’t say anything, Harry grins a little, like he usually does when he’s being arrogant, only now she finds it hot instead of even slightly off-putting. And his fingers twitch against her skin, which makes her hold her breath._ _

__“Just ask for what you want,” he says, voice all low, and she really, really doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right, even though he _is_. His hand moves up instead of down, and she turns her head to glare, which makes him laugh, which is _annoying_. She doesn’t like being made fun of. “Allie.” _ _

__“Please,” she says, and it sounds like she’s begging, which she sort of hates. But then Harry licks his lips. It’s hot, but she really just… She sits up, takes her top off and hears him mutter a curse before she lies back down. “I want you to touch me again.”_ _

__He presses his lips against her collarbone, and then down, and then she presses her hand into his hair and he says, “Okay,” and she tries not to think too hard after that._ _

__… … …_ _

__He wakes up to Allie, warm and naked and pressed up against him. He’s smiling before he’s even fully awake. Her hand is on his side, her thigh over his, and he’s never been able to sleep cuddling this way, but there’s either something different about the way she fits against him, or they exhausted each other last night. Could be either. His heart’s racing just thinking about it._ _

__Look, he’s thought about it plenty of times. Of course he has. She’s kind of his favourite person, and she looks the way she does, and she flirts back sometimes and also they spend enough time together that he can tell she’s at least thought of it a little. Like, he’s seen her checking him out._ _

__Her walking out of his bathroom in a bikini and immediately making out with him? Not how he thought it’d go down, but he’s got zero complaints. He kind of loves how straight she was about it. There wasn’t any hesitation. She knew what she wanted, and he’s fucking glad she wanted him. God, after they had sex when she was practically squirming, which was _hot_ , he could tell she just didn’t know how to _tell him_. It’s the only thing about the whole thing that made him feel like yeah, he’s got a little more experience than her. And he liked sort of reminding her she should just go for it, be direct about it and tell him. He thinks she doesn’t realize how sexy he thinks she is. But god, when she actually asked him to touch her…_ _

__Yeah, he really needs to stop thinking about it._ _

__It’s messed up that he knows how she wakes up. It’s just that she’s slept in his bed a few times by now, and he’s only woken her up the once. She does this thing where she sort of moves, fidgets a bit, and then lets out a little huff, like she’s not ready to be awake, no matter what time it is. It’s honestly one of the cutest fucking things he’s seen another person do, and no, he absolutely does not want to think about that much, either._ _

__This morning, she presses her face into his chest and stretches, still all up against him, and yeah, the not thinking about sex thing is out the window. Her hand moves down to his hip before she even opens her eyes, and Harry sucks in a breath._ _

__The first word out of her mouth is, “Fuck,” and god, he kind of loves that, too. She looks up, blinks a few times, and then tries to pull away. He places his palm flat on her back, just to let her know she doesn’t have to move if she doesn’t want to. She smiles, puts her head back down on him. “I forgot.”_ _

__“Forgot what?” he laughs, thumb moving against her skin._ _

__“Last night.”_ _

__Harry figures she doesn’t mean it in a shitty way, but still._ _

__“That good, huh?” he asks, and she doesn’t say anything, but she does turn her head to press a kiss to his chest, and then leans up, her body moving against his, and kisses his neck._ _

__“It was,” she assures him, and maybe he did need that._ _

__(Look, she came twice. He wasn’t totally inept. But the sex itself was...not his finest moment, and he just doesn’t want to talk about that. He just wants more chances to be better. And considering they’re not like, dating, and they’ve never even talked about that before last night, he doesn’t know if she’s thinking this was a one time thing, or if she wants more than that. He knows he’d be good with it. He just doesn’t know what that _means_. Like, how is he supposed to make her his girlfriend in this place? What does that even look like?) _ _

__She says his name, and he hums in response, and then she’s leaning up a little more, her fingers trailing over his pelvis, which…_ _

__“Allie.”_ _

__“I liked it,” she says, and, through even how crazy she’s making him with her hand where it is, he thinks of that first kiss, by the pool before all this, when that was her response then, too. Like it’s just a fact and there’s no room for argument. “We should do it again.”_ _

__She’s not wrong. He is impressed. He’s got a lot of questions, and he thinks it’s probably immensely stupid for them to just go for it again without talking about what it means and what they are and if they’re together, or…_ _

__Her hand moves again. So yeah, whatever._ _

__She leaves mid-morning, after putting her clothes back on. She leaves her bathing suit at his place, asks him if it’s okay, and seems to like that he just shrugs his shoulder and smiles at her. It’s not like she’s gonna be swimming anywhere else. Part of him, stupidly wonders if she just doesn’t want it around her place because it’ll remind her of this, with him. Of losing her virginity in his room last night. He’s really gotta be more gentle with himself. She’s making no hints whatsoever that she feels badly about any of it. He shouldn’t just assume she does._ _

__She kisses him fast before she leaves his room. He showers and makes his bed and then when he’s finally going to find some coffee, Becca pulls him into her room by the arm and shuts the door._ _

__“Why was Allie leaving your room with sex hair this morning, blushing and telling me she’d talk later like she has something to hide?”_ _

___Fuck_._ _

__“Why don’t you ask her?” he says, and yeah, that’ll work, right?_ _

__Becca tilts her head, puts her hands on her hips. It kind of looks hilarious with her belly growing, but now is absolutely not the time to say anything._ _

__“Because she _left_ and you’re here.”_ _

__“Look, I’m not…” He has no idea what Allie would say to Becca, but he’s absolutely sure that his refusal to deny the allegation is basically confirming it. He just doesn’t want to like, be gross about this shit. “There’s nothing to talk about.”_ _

__He gives her a look like _please drop it_ , and Becca just sighs and closes her eyes like she knows that he and Allie definitely slept together, and _also_ that she’s maybe just asking because she wants to make sure they’re both okay. Like she doesn’t want Allie to have been upset when she left, and doesn’t want Harry to be sticking around here, not chasing her, if this wasn’t what he wanted it to be. Because Becca knows how he feels. Or at least knows he _has_ feelings for Allie, even if he hasn’t told her all the details._ _

__“At least tell me you used protection,” she hisses, and Harry actually laughs, which she seems to not appreciate._ _

__If he says yes, he really confirms it, what happened last night (and this morning). But yes is literally the only appropriate answer, right?_ _

__He nods. There. Compromise._ _

__Then she says, “Allie’s really special.”_ _

__“I know,” he says, without thinking. She gets a cute look on her face like she likes that answer. “I’m not like, just fucking around.”_ _

__God, maybe that’s too much. But it’s true. No matter what happens from here, he wasn’t just flirting with her so he could sleep with her. He wasn’t just nice to her to get her into his bed. Honestly, if that were the case, he probably would’ve slept with her the first week here. He thinks he could’ve done it. Like, she was all trying to rebel against Cassandra and he’s kind of the best way to do that, right? This isn’t that. It wasn’t. When he saw her looking like that, yeah, his first instinct was to want her in even less clothing, but he wasn’t going to say or do anything about that. He thinks he’s gotten good at being Allie’s friend. He doesn’t know what any of this means, now._ _

__“You actually really like her,” Becca states, and like, god, he does, but that doesn’t make this any simpler._ _

__“Sure,” he says, and she laughs outright at him. “I mean, yeah.”_ _

__She tries to suppress her smile, and then shakes her head, sighs, and loops an arm through his. When they get to the door, he lets her go through first, but then they walk down the hall like that towards the stairs. He can almost imagine them as friends in high school, if he’s being honest. He used to see her doing this all the time with Sam. Actually, she still does. Anyway, it’s nice._ _

__She doesn’t say anything more about Allie, or him and Allie, or anything like that. They say good morning to their roommates and as Harry’s waiting for the coffee to brew, he sends Allie a message, lets her know that Becca found out and lectured him. She sends back the crying laughing emoji and also the grimace, like she’s not surprised, or something? Whatever. All he knows is that it makes him smile when he sees her name on his screen with that little yellow heart, and it’s been this way for a while._ _

__Fuck._ _

__… … …_ _

__It’s been three days since she was alone with Harry, and they’ve been texting, yeah, but she’s also super careful about that, or trying to be, because both Cassandra and Will know her password. Which is stupid. And she could change it, but that’d be suspicious, too, wouldn’t it?_ _

__They’re stuck in another dimension or universe or whatever the fuck this is, and she’s worried about her sister finding out about the guy she likes. What is wrong with her? And she thinks that if Cassandra finds out and says anything about it, Allie’s defense will be just that: don’t they have bigger things to worry about?_ _

__Doesn’t she have bigger things to worry about than whatever it is she’s got going on with Harry?_ _

__This is all very confusing._ _

__She asks if he wants to go for a walk, because she figures it’s safe and easy and not anything anyone will bat an eye at. She thinks too hard and long about what to wear, and then steps outside in jeans and changes her mind when she learns how hot it is. She pulls on a pair of cutoff shorts that fit her better last summer; she’s lost weight. They sort of hang on her hips now and even in the mirror she can see the top of her yellow underwear at her hips. She doesn’t hate it. She thinks he’ll like it. She’s being _stupid_. She pulls on a loose white tank top over her bra - matching yellow because she likes matching, okay? That bit’s more for her than it is for him or anyone else. _ _

__Harry meets her in the driveway and she rushes out the door a couple minutes late. He could’ve come in and didn’t._ _

__This feels stupidly like a date, like her parents are maybe inside and she’s going for a walk with him because she knows they wouldn’t approve of anything else. It feels like it’s summer and they’re off school and the sun is high in the sky and she’s wasting her day with a cute guy who smiles at her like _that_._ _

__“Hey,” he says, smiling, and she thinks she’s more nervous now than she was in his bed, undressed. It felt safer there. She knew what was going to happen. Out here, in the world, she has less control._ _

__“Hey.” She slips her hands in her back pockets, and Harry’s checking her out but looking like he’s trying to do it without her noticing. It makes her press her lips together and look upward, hoping he won’t notice her smiling, either._ _

__But he doesn’t say anything for too long, then when she glances over, he’s just watching her, so. Yeah, safe to say he’s probably noticed._ _

__“What even are these shorts?” he asks, slips a finger easily through one of the belt loops, tugs and then lets go. She sort of bumps into him a little and rolls her eyes._ _

__“It’s called fashion, Harry. Not all of us just wear whatever mommy buys us.” He snorts out a laugh and she checks to make sure he’s not bothered by the mention of his mom. “How are you wearing long sleeves? It’s 90 degrees out.”_ _

__“They’re rolled up,” he says, and it’s sort of a pathetic answer, and then, “I buy my own clothes.”_ _

__Allie’s brow goes up. “So this is just like, your style?” she asks, looking him up and down. He’s wearing a button down and khakis, plus a pair of sneakers. “Are you trying to be a frat guy?”_ _

__“You know…” He stops, and she wonders if he was going to say something shitty. But what he does instead is lower his voice and lean his head towards her a little. “I don’t think you can act like you don’t like the way I look.”_ _

__Her cheeks heat up, but she refuses him the satisfaction of looking at him head on._ _

__And then she decides she can play this game, too._ _

__“No, I think I’ve made it pretty clear I do.”_ _

__He stops. They’re in front of the Gellar house, which has been empty since they got here, the flowers dying in the yard. Allie turns to look at him, and his eyes linger around her hips. When she looks down, she sees he’s definitely noticed her underwear. Whatever._ _

__“Are we just hanging out, or are we gonna actually talk about it?” he asks, and Allie lets out a breath, spins on her heel, feeling her hair moving as she does, and starts walking again. Harry laughs, then catches back up. “Allie.”_ _

__“Let’s just hang out.”_ _

__“I think we should…”_ _

__She puts a hand on his arm, gives him a look. “I think we should definitely not talk, in public, about the other night.” It’s pleading, and she’s hoping he agrees. If he doesn’t, she’ll literally tell him to forget this and go back home alone._ _

__He nods, understanding. Thank god. She actually likes the idea of hanging out with him. Like they were before having sex. She really, really doesn’t want that to change everything. Maybe she does, actually. Just not in a bad way._ _

__“Ask me anything,” she says after a few moments of silence, and Harry scoffs, gives her a dubious look._ _

__“Seriously?”_ _

__“Come on! You’ve gotta have some burning questions.”_ _

__He smirks a little, which is...intriguing. “No, I think we know each other pretty well.”_ _

__Allie stops, and he hisses, presses his hand to his head. She closes her eyes tight and then covers them with her hands. _Fuck_. Right. That._ _

__“God, for a minute I could almost just pretend we were on a date,” she says softly, carefully, as the pain slowly starts to drift away. Harry nods, but his eyes are still closed._ _

__He hesitates a minute. “You wanna go on a date?”_ _

__She laughs again, keeps walking. “I’m just saying it’d be nice to have the option. Without the world ending, or whatever.”_ _

__They turn right at the end of her street, and this was a part of town mostly lived in by old people, so they don’t really run the risk of bumping into anyone they know. Not that it would matter. They’re literally just out for a walk. They’ve been seen enough together since they arrived that no one would think it weird._ _

__“Allie,” he says carefully, as if he isn’t sure how she’ll react to what he has to say next. “This headache thing...I can’t just keep not talking about it.”_ _

__She furrows her brow. Like, is he implying it’s her fault they aren’t? Literally the last time it happened, she had other things on her brain._ _

__“So let’s talk about it.” He looks so relieved. It’s irritating that he looks hot even with that expression._ _

__There’s a porch swing on the Carters’ porch. Another empty house. Allie points, and Harry looks boyish and sweet when he smiles and touches her hip. She likes it. So much. She wishes he’d touch her more. That he could do it out here. Maybe he could. Like, does she really care, actually? Is Cassandra going to walk by and see them? And if she does, isn’t Allie old enough to make her own fucking choices?_ _

__“What do you think it means?” is his conversation starter, which makes Allie laugh, and he’s rocking them on this stupid swing with his foot. She wants to lean against him, wants to touch him even though it’s too hot out for it. She sets her hand on his thigh, knowing even if someone comes onto this street, she’ll be able to move it before anyone notices. Harry’s trying not to smile._ _

__Yeah, this feels like a date. She kind of wishes they could talk about normal things, and not like, sporadic migraines that come on when they talk._ _

__“I mean, I guess my opposite of soulmates idea is out the window,” she says, and Harry gives her this little look, like… _No_. “I’m not saying we’re soulmates. Oh, my god.” He laughs quietly, looking a little more calm. Ugh. “I just mean...We’ve done a pretty bad job of staying away from each other.”_ _

__“I’m kind of really okay with that.” Allie smiles at him. God, she wants to kiss him. There’s no one around, so she does. He seems a little surprised; too surprised to kiss back. But then looks really pleased, which is cute on him. “You still feel like you’ve done this before?”_ _

__She nods gently. He looks...confused. Or scared. Or...maybe just really unsure._ _

__“Do you?”_ _

__She’s surprised when he nods. But maybe she shouldn’t be. They haven’t talked about this in ages; it’s been so much easier to just ignore it._ _

__“But it’s...everything’s really fuzzy,” he tells her. She tilts her head, listening. “Like I’m barely there.” He scoffs, shakes his head. “That’s stupid.”_ _

__“It’s not stupid,” she insists, and he takes a deep breath._ _

__He waits a beat. “I had a crazy strong déjà vu.” She glances at him. To her knowledge, he’s only had the one prior to whatever he’s referencing now. “When we were, um…”_ _

__She feels her cheeks heating, but also really wants them to be mature enough to actually talk about it. Like, if they’re having sex (and she’s really hoping that is a thing they continue to do, because she _likes it_ ), they should be able to say it out loud. _ _

__“When we were what?” she asks, and it sounds like she’s teasing, but she isn't. Harry’s got some colour in his cheeks, which is so cute she can barely stand it._ _

__“When we were in bed.” She won’t stop looking at him. He turns to her a little more, the swing moving beneath them. “When we were just about to have sex.” Oh _god_. What could that possibly… “It was like, really, really intense. Like we’d been there before.” Allie nods. She didn’t feel _that_ , specifically, but she’s felt it at other times since they got here. It’s like, this undeniable feeling that they’re doing things at least a second time. “But like...what the fuck?”_ _

__Allie laughs quietly. It’s a great question. She doesn’t have an answer, really._ _

__She turns more, her knee bumping his let. It means she has to move her hand, which is maybe fine. She drapes her legs over his, leans in close. He’s happy about this, she can tell. She wonders if she’ll ever stop wishing they weren’t _here_ and they could just be a normal couple. Not that they’re a couple. But then Harry slides his hand up her bare thigh and he’s looking at her skin as his fingertips dip just under the hem of her stupid shorts, and like...Maybe this is normal. _ _

__“I mean, what if…”_ _

__She loses her nerve to say what she thinks could be happening, because it’s insane. But all of this is insane. Everything about it. Right down to the fact that she’s sitting on a random porch late in the afternoon with Harry Bingham and his hand is on her skin like he wants her undressed. Nothing about this is even conceivable if she thinks back to the time and place they were before being on their own._ _

__“What, Allie?” he asks, and the gentle encouragement makes her stomach fill with nerves or something else entirely she doesn’t have time to unpack right now. (She thinks, a lot, about how wrong she’d been about him before. He’s really kind of lovely.)_ _

__“So, we know that this is like, a different universe or dimension or timeline, or whatever, right?” she asks, and Harry looks down, traces a freckle on her thigh with the tip of his finger. “So is it crazy to think that maybe this isn’t the only one?”_ _

__He looks up at her slowly, brows pinched together like maybe she’s onto something, but maybe he doesn’t like the way it sounds, or the thought of it at all._ _

__“What are you saying?”_ _

__He knows. She can tell. He wants her to say more. To be more clear._ _

__“Maybe this isn’t the only version of us,” she says, and it sounds so stupid as soon as she says it. Harry looks surprised, but doesn’t argue or tell her it’s dumb. “At this point, can we really assume there aren’t more? Do we have any data to prove it?”_ _

__He lets out a soft laugh, but it’s more disbelief than anything else._ _

__“Anything’s possible, I guess.”_ _

__They’re both laughing when the headache settles in. Harry leans over, his forehead against hers, and then, once their heads stop pounding, he brushes his lips against hers._ _

__“Is that insane?” she asks, and Harry’s shaking his head, and pushes his foot again to keep them moving. She sort of just wants to go to his house. To his room. His bed._ _

__“No,” he confirms, and then he’s looking at her thighs again, at his hand, and he moves his fingers just a bit. With how short her shorts are, it means he’s touching her underwear at the outside of her leg. She pushes her hand into his hair, hoping to put them on an even keel. Then he whispers, “I like this world.”_ _

__It sort of makes her feel a little breathless, and she means for, “You like me,” to be a joke, but it doesn’t come out like that._ _

__And Harry just nods, tongue sliding along his bottom lip. Yeah. _Okay_. “I like us here.” _ _

__There’s one more thing that’s weighing on her, terrifying her, and she thinks no one’s really talking about it. Not yet. She wonders if they ever will._ _

__“What if we can never leave?” she says in a whisper, and Harry’s hand flexes against her, and he meets her eyes like he’s scared of it, too._ _

__“I dunno,” he answers honestly, and there’s something she really likes about that, about Harry and his ability to just...admit that there’s a lot of shit he isn’t sure about. Maybe he only does it with her - she sees him in the committee meetings; he isn’t the same there, and she isn’t surprised. He’s different with her. She thinks he has been since the time he kissed her by the pool. Maybe even before then._ _

__“What if we leave and everything’s different?”_ _

__Honestly, that’s maybe even scarier._ _

__Harry lets out a huff of breath, moves his hand - she misses it - and then rests it on her face. “Hey.” She smiles softly, liking the way he just said that one stupid word with so much care. “Why don’t we worry about this world? Seems like we’ve got our hands kind of full, right?”_ _

__God, he’s right. There’s the issue of food, and resources, and don’t even get her started on Campbell and Dewey. There’s Becca and the baby and Cassandra’s heart and the fact that they need so much more structure if they want to make it through the winter, and they need to be doing that work _now_._ _

__But there’s this, too. There’s a summer afternoon with this guy she really likes, and there’s his lips right there in front of her and his thumb against her cheekbone and the way he _looks_ at her sometimes that has her thinking things she probably shouldn’t. _ _

__“You’re right,” she says, and wants to roll her eyes at how quickly he smiles at those words._ _

__“I know.”_ _

__“Oh, my god. Stop.”_ _

__Harry laughs, kisses her again. She likes how easily he does that, too. Like he doesn’t care if anyone sees. Like someone finding out is sort of the least of anyone’s worries. She wants to think he’s right about that, too._ _

__She admits, “I really like you,” because it feels important to say it out loud. They’ve been wrapped up in trying to unravel the mystery, but him reminding her they could instead focus on facts makes her want to be sure he knows this is one, too._ _

__“I figured,” he says, voice low, lips against her cheek, which… She’s trying to be serious._ _

__“Harry,” she says quietly, and it sounds pleading, and maybe it is._ _

__She wants to hear it. She _knows _, because...she isn’t sure how. It’s just true. She heard it in his voice the other night. The way he’d insisted on telling her he wasn’t just messing around. The way he’d been so quiet when he’d asked if she really wanted him. There was something in it like he could barely believe it, or something. It just made her want him more, made her want to be sure he knew that it meant something to her, too. And then, god, she’d heard it in the way he’d said her name, all deep into her ear, lips wet against her skin, when he pressed into her for the first time.___ _

____He says it again, her name like that. It makes her crazy. “I’m so into you.”_ _ _ _

____Allie kisses him this time, feeling daring and also like she’s ready for the consequences of people knowing about them. Then she pulls her legs down, sets her feet on the ground and settles herself next to him, his arm around her. What she wants is to go home with him. But she wants this, too._ _ _ _

____She asks him where he’d take her on a date in the old world. He replies, “Wherever you wanted,” and she hates the way her heart flutters a little because she knows he’s telling the truth._ _ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> The second other world will be posted soon. 💜


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